It’s been a while since my last post, but April – for me – was a very busy month. I knew it was gunna be, which is why I booked a weekend away with Mrs O to book-end the month – a trip that saw us ascend to the northerly latitudes of Aiberdeen, and paved the way for an officially-sanctioned visit to the Arcade Bar and Games centre on Union Street!!!
That was something to look forward to.
But as the month dragged on, I had an epiphany. I could also take an extra day off the weekend before our trip to the Silver City, and use it to beam directly down to the mother-ship, the nirvana, the epicentre of classic-arcade-gaming in Albion. You known what I’m talking about, right? The holiest of holies that is Arcade Club, Bury!!!!
I hadn’t been there for more than a year, and was eager to get back.
Not needing any extra hassles, I originally thought I’d take the train and use the trip to catch up on my retro-gaming mags and snoozing. On checking through the usual booking sites, however, it soon became clear that things weren’t going to be quite as straightforward as I had hoped. With engineering works planned on the railway to the south of Carlisle, I’d have to rely on bus transfers, with extended waits between stops. While that would have saved a few pound on the – quite frankly – fu-lippin’ expensive rail fares (or rail ‘un-fairs’ as I like to call them), it was going to pretty much double the time taken for the return journey.
So I decided to drive.
Yes, I would drive 500 miles, but maybe not 500 more!
As you can see, the drive was a long one, but it actually worked out cheaper than the cheapest train tickets I could find – even using split-ticketing. How that’s supposed to encourage us to be environmentally-friendly, I’m not entirely sure.
It also opened up a whole suite of possibilities that rail travel closes off. I could start when I liked, stop off for a break whenever I wanted, and – more importantly – choose a route that suited me best, and didn’t necessarily meaning come back the same way I went down. And that got me thinking…
…what if I were to combine being sensible (!) – by breaking up my journey into more manageable chunks – with branching out a bit in terms of the arcades I visited? What if – instead of driving straight down to Bury and back – I went on a bit of a tour? Half-an-hour on Google Maps later, and I had the mother of all arcade road-trips sketched out.
I’d leave Pictavia just after the school rush on Friday the 26th of April. First stop would be Forton Services on the M6, just south of Lancaster – a familiar location from summer holidays drives back-in-the-day. After that, the tour was timed with military-levels of precision.
Location
Day
Arrive
Depart
Eclipse Home Entertainment, Blackpool
Fri 26/04
13:30
13:50
Blackpool Seafront
Fri 26/04
14:00
16:30
St Anne’s Seafront
Fri 26/04
16:45
17:30
Arcade Club, Blackpool
Fri 26/04
18:00
20:15
Arcade Club, Bury
Fri 26/04
22:00
00:00
Arcade Club, Bury
Sat 27/04
11:30
23:00
Arcade Club, Leeds
Sun 28/04
11:00
14:30
Four Quarters, Newcastle
Sun 28/04
17:15
18:10
Blackpool was ‘interesting’. St Annes was nice. The weather at both was lovely. I checked out the arcades, the retro gaming establishments, and the ice-cream stands, and chip-shops while I was at it.
What happened next was a blur of classic-arcadey-goodness.
In fact, with my visit to the Arcadia Bar in Aiberdeen added in, there’s waaaaay too much material to squeeze into a single blogpost. So, I’m posting this as a memo.
Just when you need it most (or not!), I’ll be back with photos, opinions, and profound philosophical insights into the last redoubts of the classic-arcade scene in Blighty.
Watch this space for my new series of ‘Arcade Overload’ blogposts!
If you’ve seen my recent posts this probably won’t come as a surprise. But I’m going to put it out there anyway…
I like ‘stuff’.
Before the sniggering gets any louder, I should make it clear that’s not a euphamism. These days, the stuff I’m most fond of takes the form of classic computers, video arcade games, and related memorabilia.
Yes, I enjoy the games, but I also consider myself a connoisseur of their materiality, aesthetics, and design. That’s not to say I’m ‘materialistic’. There are limits to my love of stuff. Without limitless money or space, there have to be. But at the same time, I don’t want to be drowning in it. For me, peronsally, too much clutter is unsettling. I’m not a fan of heaps. Besides, I feel that if you look after your stuff, and take care of it, it’ll stay in better shape, for longer, and give you more enjoyment with it.
Get in the box!
As far as leitmotifs go, that’s as true for retro-computer kit as it is for just about anything else. If you let it get too dusty, too rusty, too chipped or too cracked, it’ll not only lose its shine, but stop working altogether.
That’s why, over the past 3 or 4 years, I’ve made some efforts to tidy mine up.
The first step was to curate the ‘collection’.
OK, so I’m as guilty as most of you lot of having all kinds of stuff I’m unlikely to use again. But I’ve made some attempts to thin it out. For the things I rarely used, I’ve invested in some ‘really useful’ storage boxes, and found a space for them in the loft.
Universal Games Cases
With the stuff I am likely to use, if only occassionally, I want it to look its best.
I’ve made efforts to clean, recap or otherwise tweak the machines, which I may well return to in a future post. I know a lot of you are sticklers for keeping things original. Maybe you’re especially keen on collecting the original cardboard boxes for the old console games, and keeping them sealed in plastic box protectors. While I can see the appeal of that, I’m afraid it’s not for me. I like things to be a bit more accessible.
Unless something held a specific nostaligic attachment, I’d much prefer it to look shiney and new than original. I’ve taken a slightly different approach to home-computer and console games. Where posible I’ve replaced broken or badly scratched cassette cases. But as I never really liked the cardboard boxes for console games, even when they were new, I’ve scrubbed and dressed my loose carts in the wonderful, but sadly now out-of-production, Universal Games Cases.
While they’re great for SNES, Colecovision, and C64 (!) carts, the old ‘UGC’s are a touch too svelte for Vectrex games. But that’s where Customgamecases‘ transparent N64 cases come in handy.
What about the case art, I hear you gasp? Your own efforts to replicate those things are bound to be amatuerish and jarring.
Not so.
Nowadays, there are some great resources for case art online. Sites like thecoverproject.net offer standardised designs for a wide range of systems, which are easy to tweak, or template. Provided you use photo paper – which is relatively cheap if you buy in bulk – and have a half-decent ink-jet printer, they come out looking gorgeous.
Top tip: For the best effect, cut your cover-sleeves to size using a paper guillotine. If rounded corners are required, don’t be tempted to do it with scissors – it’ll always go a bit wrong. Instead get yourself a corner cutting die off the internet for consistent curves of uniform size. Note to self: If, or rather when I make any more, I’ll also be giving them a spray with some UV-resistant sealant. Some of my earlier efforts which have been proudly displayed on window-facing shelves for the last few years, have started to fade. And we certainly can’t have that.
SNES carts as they were MEANT to be stored.
Audio-Cassette Storage and Display
Then there are the cassettes. I mean, just look at those things. Aren’t they BYOO-TI-FOOL? Aren’t they just crying out for a pretty little nest to perch in? Thank goodness for B&Q… and for circular saws.
The year before last, I got myself a smallish piece of melamine-faced hardboard, and a length of white-coated mdf kickboard for just over a tenner. After carefully measuring the cassette cases, and the materials, I figured out that I could cut enough strips for a unit of 3 shelves, each wide enough to hold 22 cassettes. Of course, that would depend on a high level of accuracy in the cuts (there wasn’t much ‘wood’ to spare), and adding enough space above the height of the cassettes to comfortably insert a finger, and remove them from the shelves.
I could have just screwed it all together. But as I had a packet of dowel pins lying about, I decided to join it up with dowels and wood glue. Top tips: 1) Cover the line of the cuts with masking tape on both sides & cut with the intended fair-side down to minimise ripping to the melamine. 2) Be prepared to disguise the inevitable chips by rotating them out of sight, and/or using some white furniture wax to touch them in.
If it all goes reaonsably well, you could end up with something that looks a bit like this.
Plinths and monitor stands
Those old Speccy games sure are purdy. Compared to the machines themselves, however. Phwoaarrrrr. You know what I’m talking about. It’s not just the games that need to be ‘staged’. A suitable plinth or stand, can really help to show off your hardware.
Check this out:
Towards the end of the first ‘lockdown’, I replaced the deck in my back garden. For various reasons, including availability, sustainability and cost, I used Scottish larch, which seems to go a lovely orangey colour if you let it age away from the weather. Kindof makes you want to pick it up and take a bite. Nom.
Seriously, though – don’t do that. It’s not good for your teeth.
The wood was a bit knotty, which meant I ended up with a fair few smaller offcuts. After burning through half of them in the fire pit, I realised I could be putting them to much better use. A few hours of freestyling with a circular saw and ‘mouse’ sander, and I had the bits for a Vectrex stand cut out and ready to assemble. Look at the grain on that!
With the small pile that was left, I was able to knock up a couple of simple but effective plinths / monitor stands for my C64 breadbin (natch) and Colecovision. I’m no carpenter, but I’ve since learned that the kind of larch I used is a bit ‘motile’. Unless it’s screwed down tight it can twist and move as it dries out (larching about?) Over time, the risers on the plinths have cupped a wee bit. But they’re still strong enough to park a car on top.
Plastic shizz off the internet
I realise that not everyone has the tools, space, or time to make their own stands and storage racks. Even if you do, there are obvious cases where that’s not necessarily the best or most practical solution.
As luck would have it, there are plenty of online retailers, not least on eBay, who can sell you ready-made or bespoke stands, brackets and plinths to show off your retro treasures. The ones I’ve acquired have been 3-D printed, originally designed to display paperback books, and bent or laser-cut from sheet acrylic. I hope you’ll agree, the end result is a lot nicer than having them all plonked flat on the table top.
The shelves
If you’ve preened and polished your collection to perfection, and got it all ready to set out on display, you might want to think about the foundation of the display itself. That’s something I did after lockdown. Having just spent the best part of 2 years shut in a disintigrating wee study, I decided to freshen it up. That wasn’t quick, easy or particularly cheap. But you can read about the planning and process in my post on the Voyage of Deskovery Part 2
Epilogue
So there you have it. A pile of stuff doesn’t have to be a burden. It doesn’t have to stacked in heaps, or hidden away in the loft or under the floorboards. Thin it out, clean it up, and stick it on display. Get it out there for the world to see.
Got any tips for storage, display or presentation of old retro-gaming gear? Please share them in the comments below.
If you’re reading this blog, you probably like old video games. I know I do! Especially those of the arcade variety. They’ve been an important part of my life for nigh on half-a-century (Yeah, I’m that old!). I’ve enjoyed them at the shows, at the seaside, in town-centres, in take-aways, at motorway service stations, up mountains, on boats, and more recently, at home. If you saw my previous post you’ll know all about my (very) modest home arcade. If you’ve yet to meet ‘The Twins’, why not grab yourself a butchers via this link.
Let’s face it, ‘though, a mere two JAMMA cabs was never going to cover all my gaming bases. They were never going to scratch that pixellated itch.
You know the score.
To reconnect with the ‘Golden Age’ of arcade or home gaming, you really need the ‘equitment’.
Inevitably, my stash of vintage gaming equipment has grown to include a selection of old computers, consoles, and TVs. Not so many that I’m in danger of getting showcased – in Retro Gamer magazine – or one of those ‘hoarding’ documentaries! But I do seem to have acquired a modest collection of stuff.
As a naturally tidy person, I kept most of it stored away in the loft, rotating things out every now and again as time permitted. Starting about 2016, however, I was also bitten by the console-revival-bug that started with the NES, C64, and SNES minis. Being living-room-friendly, it was a lot easier to leave them out, under the TV, and left on for the kids to play at parties and gatherings. Perhaps not surprisingly, they proved to be rather popular.
Fast-forward to the Christmas holidays in 2018, and a dinner with friends – and the topic of video-games events came up.
Why?
Our local library had been dumped by the coonsil, only to be saved at the last minute by a community group. Events were needed to encourage folks, especially kids, to keep coming into the building on a regular basis – hopefully to borrow and read some books! But keeping the venue open wasn’t cheap, so fundraising was important too.
Various suggestions were on the table, mostly on the kind of book-related themes you might expect. But as the bleeps and bloops in the background began to escalate, it seemed that we had another potential solution staring us right in the ears. What about a Retro Games Club? The idea appeared to have wings. A few weeks of discussion, photoshopping and printing later and I had a plan.
In today’s post, I want to share my experience of running a Retro Games Club. I’ll cover what we did, how we did it, and how long it all took. That way, if you ever take the notion of running a club of your own, you can side-step the logistical problems, and start with the dial wanged all the way round to 11!
Gathering the troops
If you’ve got enough stuff, enough time and enough energy, it’s perfectly possible to set up and run a retro games club on your own. If you can remember back to the glory days of the JAMMA+ forum, you’ll probably know about the legendary efforts of Mr RGP (Retro Games Party), which have since blossomed into a bona fide business model.
For my humble project, however, the idea was to get the local community involved – to spread the joy, but also the load. Being of a certain age (old) was pretty useful here. With a few of my friends also harbouring retro-gaming urges, there would be a range of hands on deck. As we were all dads, we also had a ready made constituency of mini-gamers to help get the party started.
So far, so good.
Between us, we had a pile of retro kit – but that didn’t mean we could just plug it all in and get started. The venue was now run as a charity, and the terms of its insurance meant that electronics equipment had to be P.A.T. tested. With some of this stuff being 40 years old, and some of it accumulating 1000s of Volts, it was important that we didn’t expose the public, or the building, to any unnecessary risks. Even more so when kids would be involved. For an extra layer of saftey – and convenience – we also decided to run most of the stuff via fused extension cables. That meant absolutely tonnes of stuff had to get tested. If we’d had it done privately, it would have cost a bomb. Fortunately, a member of the Committee was a registered electrician, who gave up an evening to do it for free. If you need to get this done yourself, it’s worth checking if any local sparkies will do a special rate for charities. I’ve heard of some that will do it for a pound a test – although even at that rate you could be looking at £50 or more for a half-decent selection of gear!
Planning the event
With the equitment gathered, tested, and ready to go, the next big step was to advertise the first event. Before we could do that, however, we had to figure out what the format would be.
The main thing – obviously – was being able to offer a wide range of systems and games. But we also wanted to avoid the ‘tyranny of choice’, where the limitless selections of multi-carts can isolate gamers from each other, and quickly lead to boredom. The more sessions we ran, the more obvious it became that optimum levels of fun were generated by paring back the selection of games as much as possible – essentially running every system as a dedicated arcade cabinet.
Rather than simply turning on the machines and leaving the visitors to it, we decided to have a couple of systems fitted with multi-carts, but for most to be running a single competition game – with high scores getting listed on a white board, and prizes awarded to the winners.
In terms of competition games, we had to think pretty carefully about the selection on offer.
Lots of folks have very fond memories of obscure old games – and while we were keen to accommodate those nostalgia trips where possible, we were also conscious that they wouldn’t always make the best games for quick plays or competitions.
The winning formula turned out to be pretty straightforward. Games should be simple, easy to learn, have a clear scoring mechanism, and not last very long – allowing the maximum number of people to have a go, and to encourage a bit of competition. Games like Frogger, Galaxian, and Chuckie Egg fit the bill rather nicely.
Nowadays, there are also a bunch of amazing home-brew games for the C64, including the awesome Canabalt, and the 4K phenomena Winky Blinky and Dog that make for really great competitions. If you haven’t seen them, be sure to check ’em out!
I already had a whiteboard and pens we could use for high scores. A few shifts on GIMP later, and we had some information boards for the machines, some labels highlighting the prize games, and some certificates for the winners. Kids love that kind of thing!
Given that the club was going to involve a long stretch on Saturday afternoons, we reckoned that there should also be snacks. First thoughts were the kind of comfort snacks we remembered from our own youth – donuts, crisps, and coca cola. All the good stuff! But as responsible, community-minded adults, we also had to be sensible. Healthy snacks (apples!) would also be available, as would gluten and sugar-free alternatives. There would also be some water, coffee and – of course – biscuits for the grown-ups. All of this would come at a cost, which would have to be covered by the ticket price. While the ultimate goal was to raise some money for the library on top of this, we didn’t want to price anyone out.
Compromises had to be reached.
Luckily, the best donuts on the market (street), could be had for 11p each in packs of 5. Crisps weren’t much more. And at the time, cans of coke (full-fat and sugar free) were south of 30p a tin (if bought in mahoosive boxes). Figure in some packets of gummi-type sweets for prizes, the fruit, and the gluten and sugar-free snack alternatives, and we found that we could cater for about 80p a head. That was assuming that this wouldn’t be a one-off event, and that the remainder of any bulk-buys could be held over to the next event. Setting the ticket price at £2 including snacks seemed like good value, and would still generate some cash for the library. I imagine you’d have to raise that to £3 or more nowadays to achieve the same kind of results.
Letting the world know
The plan was to let people pay on the door. But to encourage folks to buy into the event in advance, I also rustled up some souvenir tickets. If you’re going to do this kind of thing yourself, you’re going to need a paper guillotine. Cutting them out with scissors is a pain in the proverbials.
The final hurdle was letting the world know. To do that, we needed some posters.
The design of the posters was deliberately cluttered (honest!) – partly for ironic reasons, but mostly to give the intended audience something to explore, and hopefully to find something specific to identify with. Something to hook them in. We posted them on relevant and specifically-targetted web-platforms and ‘socials’. For extra-added old-skool charm, they were also printed out, laminated, and pinned up on notice boards around the village!
After the first few, I decided to beef up the retro-chic-quotient by adding some 80s icons.
Eventually, the temptation to riff off (rip off?!) the kids’ favourite TV show was just too hard to resist.
And once you go down that road, the challenge of matching branding, fonts and styling sets you sliding down the slippery road towards addiction.
In the end, things started getting a bit out of hand!
Let battle commence!
As you can see from the posters, the Club had its premier on the 20th of April 2019. That’s five whole years ago! Happy Birthday ‘Retro Games Club’!
Getting everything ready that first Saturday morning took ages.
Moving my own stuff from its various hidee-holes at home into the boot of the car took about an hour. This was on top of the hour it had already taken to go to the shops to buy the scran, and make up some flasks of coffee for the grown ups.
From parking the car outside the venue to being fully green-lit and ready to go took another 45 minutes – and that was with several other people helping to get the boxes in, unpack the stuff, and set it all up. Getting everything dimantled, back into the boot, and finally stowed away at the end of the day took another 90 minutes. So, basically, with a 1 pm start in mind, the shenanigans had to get underway by about 10 am. The 5 pm finish meant that tea could not be eaten, nor hostelries visited before about 6.30 pm. That’s quite a shift for the old day off!
After a few sessions, it was clear that a later start time would be needed to let us get things ready at a less frantic pace. It also meant we had time for some lunch before the guests arrived. Noice.
Retro-games clubbing!
Running the Club was definitely not a one-man job.
In fact, you’ll want a sensible number of adults for the size of the intended audience. A ratio of about 1 to 10 is usually a good idea. But you’ll need to make sure that at any given time, the whole area can be looked over by adults who’ve gone through the appropriate background checks. In Scotland, that means a DBS (Disclosure Scotland) check. The easiest thing to do here is to get someone involved who already works with kids (eg. as a school teacher, teaching assistant, nursery teacher etc.), or who is involved with a childrens’ group, like the Scouts or the Boys’ Brigade. Teachers will already have one, paid for by their employer – as will most folks who are regular contributors to kids’ groups. Depending on the size of the venue, one might be enough. The best thing to do is check the rules and requirements with the venue itself. They may well have a list of certified volunteers who can come along for the day and help out. Fortunately, we had all those bases covered between us.
We needed someone at the front desk to meet, greet, explain what was happening, and make sure that high scores were recorded accurately. We also needed bods in circulation to keep an eye on the kids, and the machines (!), and to check that everything stayed on and working. It’s amazing how easily kids can crash RPi set-ups – even when they’ve been certified bomb-proof by adults.
With the snacks, rather than leaving everything out on a table and having folks help themselves, we decided to have a dedicated snack-time about half-way through. Two adults minimum were needed to hand out the goods, and make sure that the inevitable debris was quickly and suitably recycled. Those kids went at the donuts and crisps like a shoal of piranhas! Cloths, kitchen roll, disinfectant spray, and binbags were on hand in case of catastrophe. We also decided to give guests a time-warning at 4.30, and to use the last 10 minutes for anouncing the competition-winners and awarding the prizes.
How did it all work out?
In short, it was BRILLIANT!
That first day – which we ran as a test – had about 20 paying guests. More would have been better. But in retrospect the limited nmbers were a good thing. It gave us the space we needed to iron out the creases and nail down the routine. After that, word spread, with the number of paying guests doubling to around 40 for the next event, and passing 50 by the end of November.
The growing numbers inspired an adults-only event between Christmas and New Year, with beer and cake, as well as coke and donuts. I have to say, it looked pretty good fun, even if I was lumped with responsible person status!
Game Over?
By late February 2020, we’d got into a bit of a rhythm. The Retro-Games Club was taking off as a local event. The vibe was good, the kids had fun, and we’d raised several hundred pounds for the library.
Plans for a follow-up event at the end of March were well underway when…
Well, we all know what happened in March 2020.
It was late 2022 before we were in a position to think about a revival.
By that point, the pooled retro-collections, Rpi-creations, and TV stock-pile had grown. I’d managed to bag a few extra CRTs through a local advertising campaign (!), and was keen to get them fired up and running clasic video games.
Unfortunately, in the years that had passed since our last event, the library’s buildings insurance had been changed to one that seemed to require full PAT-testing for every single piece of electrical equipment being used. While that seems sensible for high-voltage kit, like CRT TVs, I’m not so sure it’s necessary for very low-power gear like RPis. I also ‘hae ma doots’ that blasting aging PC Engines or Vectrexes (Vectrices?) with a test jolt is the best thing for their electronic health. To my mind, the regulations would allow for (partial) exceptions for this kind of equipment, especially if other layers of saftey precaution were put in place. But that doesn’t mean the insurance company needs to agree!
Epilogue
If I can find a way to spare my geriatric electronics the indignity of shock-testing, I’d be up for reviving the Retro Games Club. An alternative might be to restrict the event to less valuable and less-cherished relics, like RPi-based systems and LCD screens. Would that cut the mustard? Maybe some of the dads would still come along. But in the life of the kids who used to visit the Club, 5 years is a very long time. The ones who still play video games have moved on to more modern things. Some of them have left home and moved away. Would an even younger crowd be interested in our Stone Age appliances? Watch this space. We’ll have to wait and see…
Have you organised a Retro Games Club? Do you have any tips to share? Do you plan to, and have questions to ask? If so, please join the conversation in the comments section below.
What news is there in the city? Have the proud woo-ers by this time come home from their ambush, or are they still watching for me where they were, to take me on my homeward way?
Homer (The Odyssey, Book 16)
Greetings fellow arcade enthusiasts, and welcome back to my humble blog. Prepare to go ‘Woo’, for I bring news…
According to WordPress.com, Arcade Odysseus has been troubling the blogosphere for 520,960 minutes. That’s a whole lot of minutes. But what it means #IRL is that this site has now been up and running for a whole year!!!
‘Woo!’ and dare I say, ‘Hoo!’
So, many happy returns to Arcade Odysseus, but – more importantly – many thanks to all you lovely, lovely, wonderful readers for keeping me company on my journey.
We’ve covered quite a distance, haven’t we?
I’m not just talking about the 8,000 miles from the Glens of Pictavia to Funspot, NH, and back. There are also the strange aeons of time we’ve crossed in our joint quest to return to the Golden Age of video arcade games.
To celebrate, I thought I should introduce you to my twins. OK, so they’re not human, and they entered my world two years apart. But there are two of them!
I’ve already covered their protracted gestation, here, in a tale that’s bound to strike a chord with more than a few of you VACers. To cut a long story short, my attempts to get hold of a real-life, old-school, video-arcade cabinet for my own home began in 2007. For various reasons, it was late 2010 before I could put any serious effort into the project, and 2012 before it came to fruition.
Rob & Donnie, March 2024.
Twin number one arrived in April of that year. As you can see, his name is Rob O’Tron. And what a fine, strapping example of an Electrocoin Goliath Mark 3 he is. Twin number two joined us almost 2 years later, in May 2014. His name is Donnie K. Conn.
Compared to many collectors, my shrine to the gods of arcades past is meagre.
In an ideal world, and an ideal games room, I’d want hunners (= ‘a lot’) of the things. I reckon I’d ‘need’ a few of my favourite dedicated cabs, some pinball tables, and enough generic JAMMA cabs to cover all the control variations, from joystick, steering wheel and spinner to flight yoke, flight stick, and light gun.
What I have is a compromise. It fills the space available – in terms of room, and spousal tolerance (!). From my perspective, it also serves as a striking and emotive art installation that recalls an important moment in time, culture, and my own life journey. Goliaths FTW!
Beyond that, it lets me play horizontal and vertical games without any hassle whatsoever 😉
The Beauty Parlour
I may only have two cabs, but as I’m sure you’ll all appreciate, the scope to tinker, tweak, and tamper is not only limitless but very difficult to resist.
First up is the ‘ritual cleansing’.
Something that never ceases to amaze me, is the number of folk selling L@@K!!R@RE!!!! arcade kit, who don’t seem to know about cloths or soapy water. You see, I like to look after my stuff. And I don’t want huge hulking great objects d’art in my housecovered in grime. But that’s fine, I find the cleaning aspect of the hobby therapeutic. For me, the process was similar to those guys cleaning carpets on YouTube. Don’t get me wrong, the machines were clean to the touch when they came in. But decades of accumulated dust, dirt and cigarette smoke were laminated onto the surface – especially on the inside. That had to go.
After several gallons of warm soapy water, and a thorough airing, the scrapes, gouges and bumps on the outside were filled and touched-in.
BeforeAfter
I used acryllic model paint. While easy to blend and apply, it has faded over the years. I’ll need to redo the dings at some point, and maybe, when I do, I’ll spray over the top-coat with some UV-resistant anti-fade spray. It seems to work well enough on ink-jet photos, so it should do the job on the cabs. While I was doing this, I also used a black sharpie to touch in the cracks and creases on the black monitor shrouds. Hidden behind the glass bezel, the now look as good as new.
Next up, the metalwork was in need of a refresh. While there isn’t very much of it, getting the top coat dry without an effing insect landing on it, leading to a rub-down and respray was… challenging.
The coin doors, while OK, weren’t set up to let me use the big 10 pence pieces I enjoyed in my youth. So out they came, to be replaced with twin-slot doors, cut to accommodate low-maintenance S10 coin mechanisms.
While doing this, I sanded the black paint-work back to the metal, which reminded me of the doors on old Williams’ cabs like Defender. So I polished them up and left ’em like that. After fitting some new bulbs to the coin return buttons, I replaced all the barrel locks with new, keyed-alike mechs – which are far more convenient for a ome setup.
In those days, when it was easier and often cheaper getting spare parts from the States, I sourced a some replacement coin slot bezels from a stateside seller. A bit of scanning and photoshop later, and Y100 became 10p. At the same time, I bagged me a pile of old 10 pees off eBay – enough to generate the familiar ‘chink’ that followed the dropping of a coin through the slot.
Buttons were removed, cleaned, bleached, and then polished! Leaf-switches were refurbished and fine-tuned, and the monitors recapped, with burnt-in tubes eventually switched out for shinier, cleaner versions. Getting hold of those tubes, however, was nowhere near as easy or as quick as I would have liked. In fact, one of them still isn’t perfect (if anyone has a burn and scratch free 19″ screen compatible with Hantarex boards, that they no longer need, please drop me a line!).
Of course, the maquees had to be swapped out too. This presented me with a quandry. Which artwork should I use? Tonnes of the acade games I like have eye-catching marquees. Loads of them are reproduced in glorious, touched-up technicolour by Tim Nicholls in his excellent 2015 compendium, Artcade: The Book of Classic Arcade Art. However, to my mind, not all of these were suitable for their designated space, or the curatorial dimension of my ‘installation’. So I went for marquees with recognisably classic vibes. My thinking was tha they should have clean lines and bright colours, and come from games that I liked. My initial choices were Robotron and Defender.
At the time, the easiest – and cheapest – way to do this was to source high resolution scans off the internet, tidy them up in an art package, and print them out on heavy duty photo paper on the A0 plotter at work. Years later, when forum celebrity Muddy Music had set up his Arcade Art Shop, I grabbed myself some perspex replacements. This time round, however, I swapped Defender for Donkey Kong on my vertical cab. Classic game! Shame I’m still no good at it…
Like the marquees themselves, marquee lights don’t last forever. These days, a lot of collectors are swapping them out for LEDs. I’ve stayed with CFL for now, but have had to replace tubes and starters – which are all still available online.
That brings us on to the joysticks – which are a crucial part of the arcade experience. None of this ‘gamepad’ nonsense for me. Not even on my 1980s consoles! That’s right. I’ll always rock an arcade stick in preference to a gamepad. Pah!!!
My first cab came with ‘asymmetic’ sticks – as captured by my kids in an early piece of visual art! That would never do. They had to be replaced asap.
Daddy’s Arcade Mk I
First up were a pair of Happ ‘bat-top’ sticks from the States. At the time, that was cheaper than buying them in the UK. They were fine for most things, but not what I needed for Robotron. Luckily, not long afterwards, I was able to bag 3 leaf-switched Wico sticks on the now defunct JAMMA+ forum.
Sticks the firstSticks the second
The shafts were pretty rusty, but nothing a quick whizz in a drill couldn’t cure, when Brasso and wire wool were applied. A similar process sorted out the dings and scratches on the plastic knobs, with the help of Novus 123, and some fine-grade wet’n’dry sandpaper. To complete the revitalised look, I visited ArcadeShop.de for some NOS grommets and dust washers.
Later, when cab number two was having it’s beauty treatment, I was able to find a Cyprus-based seller on eBay with a pile of NOS Wico sticks. The price delivered was $112. In those days, that was about £75 in total, for two sticks and postage!!!
A quick note on Wicos. Many keyboards have been hammered to dust by ‘forumites’ evangelising the importance of a 4″ shaft when playing Robotron (oo err missus!). As a result, they’ve been rare and difficult to get hold of for a decade. I reckon at least part of that stick schtick was to shill the market.
But here’s the thing: if you have a dedicated Williams’ Robotron cab, where the control panel is packed with 1/2 inch ply (into which a shallow rebate for the joysticks is routed), the shafts protrude around 3 1/2 ” from the outer surface. If, however, you have an Electrocoin JAMMA cab, where the joysticks are bolted directly under the 2 mm mild-steel control panel, the far more common 3 1/2″ shafts also stick about 3 1/2″ above the outer surface. You heard it here first kids. For authentic Robotron gameplay, you don’t necessarily need 4″ sticks. Check your control panel before dropping a fortune on eBay treasures!
The more I started getting back into my arcade favourites, the more I realised that when it came to vertical games, Golden Age titles just can’t be enjoyed the way they were intended without a 4-way restrictor gate. Technically, Wicos can be switched between 4-way and 8-way, but TBH, it’s a bit of a bollâche, as the French (don’t) say. The solution for easy 4-8-way switching? A pair of Ultimarc Mag Stick Plus joysticks – with ball-top handles. If you have a Goliath, you’ll need an adaptor plate to mount them (the interweb is your friend here). But once they’re in, it’s just lift, twist, and away you go. It makes quite a difference.
My final tweak – so far (!) – was to refurbish the control panels. I’d already picked up a pair of Wico LS-30 rotary sticks, so I could enjoy Rambo-inspired shooters like Ikari Warriors. Rather than mucking about with swapping joysticks in and out, I decided to find a spare control panel and keep them permenantly fitted. While I was at it, I also took the opportunity to replace the CPO (control panel overlay). Like the marquees, this came from the Arcade Art Shop.
When I have a spare day (or two!), the other two control panels will be getting the same treatment. I know a lot of you arcadists are keen on showcasing your cabs’ battle scars. I’m coming round to the idea that a storied appearance can look good on a dedicated cab. For Electrocoins, however, I want mine to look the way I remember them from bitd – minty fresh and polished to within an inch of their electronic lives! In the meantime, I’ve swapped out the rusty old coach bolts securing the joysticks for some shiney, shiney stainless-steel replacements. NB: when fitting these, you need to press down had on the top of the bolt with something rubbery when tightening the nut, otherwise, it’ll rotate and ruck up your CPO. That’s not a good look!
Stainless steel coach bolts.
To finish up, here are some shots of the cabs just after they came in:
Here they are again after their refurbs, almost 10 years ago:
And here they are again yesterday!
Games
‘[G]od soon gave us game to satisfy our hearts’
Homer (The Odyssey, Book 9)
Compared to most collectors, I don’t have a lot of PCBs. Just a few favourites, including the best game of all time… Rygar. Obviously. I also have a few multi boards, including the outstanding JROK Williams FPGA board, for authentic Robotron action. Other boards have come and gone over the years, because, basically, I don’t have any sensible places to keep them. What I have done is invest in a couple of inline Volt-meters, to be sure that my PCBs can be tuned to run under optimum conditions.
For reasons of convenience, most of my gaming has been done on MAME via PCs and Ultimarc J-PAC adaptors. For the first few years, I used (really!) old office PCs running Windows XP, MAME and the MALA frontend. That was fine… to an extent. MALA is uncluttered, simple, and easy to use. To shut down safely, however, you needed an extra, dedicated button, which is a bit of a pain. But I was able to fit one – discretely – to the top of the cab.
Frustratingly, the first few PCs failed after a year or so. Good job they were free! That could be because they were ancient and at the end of their natural lives anyway. But I was suspiscious that steam from the kitchen may have been intefering with their innards. As a precaution, I started keeping a couple of disposable moisture traps in the electronics section of the cabs. It could be a coincidence, but since then – maybe 8 or 9 years ago – nothing has failed.
Not long after that, I invested in one of 2Huwman’s Linux-based Mini Kab systems. It was great while it lasted. Fast-booting, reliable, and straightforward. Once I’d ugraded my switching PSU to 4A on the 12V line, it could run without a separate PSU. Sadly, in early 2020, it perished in a freak cat-tralated accident and had to be replaced. These days I run older, USFF PCs running Groovymame, on builds compiled by the initimitable Mr JonnyG. That guy is a hero!
Epilogue
I hope you’ve enjoyed the story of my little home arcade. I’ve certainly enjoyed the machines. They’ve been a regular fixture at gatherings and parties, and especially popular with the kids. My own kids have grown up with them. They may have moved on to more modern things, but at least they know their gaming history. And they’re under strict instructions. When their old dad finally pops his clogs, they can keep one of the machine if they like. But the other one is to have the gubbins removed, and used as a vessel for my final journey – to the great Amusement Arcade in the sky…
What else should I do to my Goliaths? How else could I tweak them for the ultimate arcade experience? Please leave you thoughts, recommendations and tips in the comments section below!
I mean, they weren’t just games. They were a full-on sensory workout! You got retina-searing colours, synapse-tingling jingles, and the chance to spray your digital territory with crudely miss-spelt memos in instalments of 3 letters: XYZ IZA D*K anyone? Remember that? Amazing!
Now, remember when we discovered we could play video games at home, in our own house?
I’m not talking about table-top games or handhelds here. Sure, those things filled a niche – as we’ll see in Matt Precious’ hotly anticipated retrospective, From Coin-Ops to Table-Tops: The Essential Electronic Games. And yeah, the kids who were lucky enough to have one of them VFD-endowed beauties – and were allowed to take it in for the bring-a toy-to-school-day – could dine-out on their shot-giving largesse for-pretty-much-ever (OK, the rest of the week). But let’s face it, those things were never more than also-rans.
We can also skip over the old, Pong-type TV games here. Can anyone honestly say that those things held their attention for more than a couple of weeks – even in the bleakest winter evenings of the early 1980s?
Where I want to go with this is home computers, people. Because they….. were GLORIOUS!
My original plan for this post was to begin chronicling my journey through the world of personal computers, starting with the ZX Spectrum. But there’s already so much copy out there – so many websites, blogposts, Youtube videos, and podcasts that do such a brilliant job of showcasing the systems and the games, that it all seemed a bit redundant.
While I might come back to some of my favourite games in the future, what I thought I’d do instead is focus on the times and places that were central to my own 8-bit era. I thought it would be nice to take you back with me on a journey through the sights, the scenery, and the shenanigans of a typical 1980s shopping mall – to help you reconnect with the Golden Age in all its beige, brown and orange splendour. Yes, what I’m offering is some essential therapy to help you better remember what made it all so great. Coincidentally, that’s also a lot easier for me to structure. You see, for me, the 8-bit era started, and ended in the same place – Cumbernauld…
The 8-Bit Era
As a child of the the 1970s, I was prepped and ready for the home computer revolution. Yessir, I knew all about computers. I’d seen them on Star Trek, Blake’s Seven, and Tomorrow’s World. I’d even read about them in comics and newspapers. I felt like I really understood computers – you know what I mean? I’d never actually had my hands on one, of course, but all of that changed at the tail end of 1982.
It turned out that a friend of mine’s dad was a home computer enthusiast. He’d dropped a fortune on a BBC model B, a Microvitec Cub monitor, a double disk-drive, and some other shizz. I’m assuming it was somehow work-related. Grossed up for inflation, we’d be looking at north of 4 grand nowadays. Maybe even 5! That clearly made it ‘precious’, and not something destined for ‘open access’.
But here’s the thing. With us finishing school at half past three, and the parents in question not getting home from work until about half past five, there was a window of opportunity to explore its digital delights and clear out before anyone knew – which is exactly what we proceeded to do.
Somewhat suspiciously, the software collection wasn’t limited to spreadsheets – not that I’d even heard that word back then. Over the next year or so, I was introduced to a cornucopia of ‘black-label’ 5 and 1/4″ floppies, filled with titles like Rocket Raid, Hopper, and the mighty Planetoid.
Yes, this was very naughty – an early example of what came to be known as ‘Piracy’! In terms of morality, however, I’d suggest there was an element of karma at work here. I could be wrong, but I doubt Acornsoft had negotiated a distribution license with the creators of Scramble, Frogger, or Defender. Arrrrrr!
Those games were great. Arguably, amongst the best of the early arcade conversions on any system, and unsurpassed until Richard Broadhurst’s retro re-imaginings of the twenty tens. But truth be told, I was also captivated by the prospect of programming in Basic. Yes, that’s right. Writing computer programmes was called ‘programming‘ in those days. None of this new-fangled ‘coding’ malarky. So, I started borrowing books about computer programming from the library.
While I didn’t have a computer to practice on, I used to rehearse the routines on the back of my jotters in the clock-watching slots at school. My teacher thought I was doing sums (teeheehee!). The irony! If she’d clocked on to what I was up to, I’d have copped one for sure – even although my subversive scribblings had far more career value than the tedious sums I’d already finished.
Before long, I was totally hooked. There was never any chance of me getting a BBC micro. But it was so out of reach, that it never really bothered me. What did get me excited was an old copy of Computer & Videos Games I’d been given in the spring. A BBC was never going to happen, but there was this new computer that everyone was talking about – it was even in the magazine, for flip’s sake! You could get it for less than £200, and you didn’t even need a monitor or a disc-drive to use it. You could just plug it into the TV and play games off ordinary cassettes!!! Its name? The Zed Ex Spectrum.
A relative noticed what I was up to and passed on a pile of pre-loved computer mags. Some of them were pretty recent. In amongst the articles and adverts, was some encouraging news. Basic-ally (!), with early production-line issues under control, Sinclair Research Ltd. had taken the decision to slash the price of the Spectrum. The £175 originally asked for the 48K model had been cut to less than £130. Even better news, the 16K model had been pushed down below the psychologically-important £100 barrier. It may not have had the same (games-playing) potential, but you could solve that problem later by saving up for a 32K RAM expansion! I could hardly believe it!
Now, these days, £100 is not a lot of money. It doesn’t touch the sides of our weekly food shop – and that’s at Lidls. But in 1983, the pounds and pennies in your pocket went a lot further. Bearing in mind that a Spectrum – on its own – was no good, and needed a £20-30 cassette recorder to load and save the software, we’re talking about a likely minimum spend of £130. Plug that into the Bank of England inflation calculator and we’re pretty firmly in PS5 territory. In fact, at the time I’m writing this, it’s almost exactly what it’d cost you to buy yourself a PS5 ‘Slim’ from Argos. Whodathunkit?! A 16K ZX Spectrum set-up had the equivalent value of an all-singing, all-dancing, ultra-modern Playstation 5 ?!?!
With a birthday coming up soon, I started dropping hints at home, asking everyone for cash instead of presents. My pitch was for the 16K model, with my marketing strategy foregrounding the ‘educational’ potential of the machine. I mostly wanted it for the games, of course, but the potential sponsors needed to know there were some traditionally acceptable outcomes too!
When the dust cleared after the big day, it turned out that I’d been a very lucky boy. With the help of my granny, there was enough for a ZX spectrum, a basic tape recorder, and a game! To say I was excited would be an understatement. There was only one minor setback. My birthday was on a Saturday, and I wasn’t going to see everyone until Sunday or maybe Monday. Ultimately, that meant that the purchase would have to wait.
1983-era John Menzies Flyer (skooldays.com). Note the cost of the ZX Spectrum in the lefthand column, and then compare it with Menzies’ pricing – as if they had a unique special offer 😦
On Saturday afternoon, my Dad took me up to Cumbernauld to get a few bits we needed for my birthday tea. We got some strawberries for the victoria sponge my mum was making. I even got a ‘big’ bar of Dairy Milk (by 1983 standards) – an unexpected bonus, ticking off a longstanding ambition of mine! Even better than that, we nipped into John Menzies to check that they actually sold ZX Spectrums at the price we expected them to be, and that they had some in stock. The plan was to come back the following Friday after school and buy it then.
The 6 days that followed were the longest of my life so far. But the time passed, as it always does, and come Friday evening, I was the proud owner of a Spectrum, a tape recorder, andthe Planet of Death text adventure. Sadly, the game didn’t work, and we were eventually able to swap it for Psion’s Hungry Horace. But that evening, there was more than enough to keep me busy in the introductory Horizons tape. Who can forget the keyboard trainer, the evolution of foxes and rabbits, or the Breakout clone, Thro’ the Wall?
The next day was a Saturday, and a sunny one at that. Naturally, I spent the morning inside with the curtains drawn, glued to the screen. I remember hearing my wee brother and pals out in the garden. Eventually, and inevitably, I gave up on keyboard trainer and went out to join them.
Not my Spectrum, sadly. The only bit of my set-up that survives is a random flap from the box it came in. This holy relic was preserved like a fly in amber, or rather a bookmark jammed between the pages of a Fighting Fantasy volume.
Over the next few years, I put together a small collection of original tapes. Like most folks, however, the bulk of my gamage revolved around, ahem, ‘back-up’ copies on C15, C45 or even C90 tapes. With the originals being few and far between, and the local ‘back-up’ scene taking a year or two to fully develop, I had to get my gaming fix in other ways. Like loads of other kids in those days, I turned to the type-in programmes published in magazines. Sometimes, those programmes promised an approximation of a popular arcade game, or at least part of it.
One rainy Saturday morning in November 1983 (yes, that’s before the date on the magazine below, that’s how those things worked!), a trip to John Menzies in Glasgow revealed what promised to be a decent version of the arcade classic Hunchback. It was showcased on the contents page of the classy, Your Computer magazine. With a cover price of 80p instead of the more usual 75p, it was bound to be good.
I bought the mag in the hope – and expectation – of great things. In the end, I must have spent more than 3 hours typing that fecker in, only for it to not work and for my tape recording to fail. I don’t know if that was down to me (likely), typsetting issues with the print out in the magazine (also likely), or if the programme never actually worked in the first place (something I’ve since read was not unkown!). Whatever. That was the last time I typed anything in from a magazine longer than a POKE.
Come Christmas, Santa was kind enough to bring me a 32K Rampack, swelling the machine’s memory to 48K, and opening up the entire spectrum of gaming possibilities. At the same time, a couple of the neighbouring families had bought Spectrums for Christmas, helping to kickstart the local home computer scene.
What’s it Called?
I got my Spectrum from the John Menzies in Cumbernauld Town Centre. Did you ever go there? I appreciate that you probably didn’t. But if you grew up just about anywhere in the ‘UK’ in the 1970s or ’80s, aspects of it would have been very familiar – especially the names and types of shops. We’re not just talking John Menzies here, but Currys, Tandy, Klicks, Granada, Rumbelows, Thomas Cook, Mothercare, Barretts, Saxone and more besides – brands that we haven’t seen on the streets for years, and in some cases decades.
When you look at the ‘then and ‘now’ shots in the photos below, you’ll no doubt also associate with the washed out, soporific, and sterile experience of the modern era. While that’s a bit sad, I think it also helps to emphasise how full of life and colour those places were back in the day. And yes, I realise how odd that sounds when most of the photos are artfully rendered in black-and-white. But I’d argue that it actually gives them a dream-like quality. Or something.
Cumbernauld Town Centre, as I remember it, went One Step Beyond the other malls of the era. OK, so the exterior was a horrific, brutalist mess. But by the time Phase IV of the shopping complex had been completed in 1981, the designers had clearly made some real efforts to up their game. The decor and branding embraced the full, extended colour palette of the late 1970s, with its interlocking triangles of brown, beige and orange. They even commissioned the artist – Michael Snowden, RSA – to elevate the place with sculptures and other cultural experiments.
Michael Snowden sculpure.
The outside, may have looked like a nightmare, but the inside was a dream – filled with optimism and choice retail outlets!
John Menzies
John Menzies, Teviot Square (below), and Ettrick Square (above), Cumbernauld Town Centre, c. 1987.
There it is, John Menzies, c. 1987. The retail mother of my ZX Spectrum! The home computer section was upstairs to the rear and right of the shop. I don’t remember this branch lasting long into the 1990s, when at least part of the unit was taken over by Superdrug. The image below was taken in the Murraygate branch of Menzies in Dundee in 1986. As far as I can remember, the set-up of the ‘computer department’ in Cumbernauld was almost the same.
Computer Department (!), John Menzies, Murraygate, Dundee, November 1986. The guy fiddling with the equipment is shop assistant Stephen Marr, apparently.
In fact, it was fairly similar to the computer section of most other high-street chains at the time. The photo below is from Rumbelow’s on Teviot Walk in Cumbernauld Town Centre. What made Menzies different was the range of games, which was usually a lot better, and the selection of computer magazines on sale downstairs.
Kilsyth Chronicle, Wednesday 7 July 1983 (I think!)
Looking back, I didn’t go up to Cumbernauld that often. I much preferred the combined shopping and arcading opportunities of Falkirk, Stirling and Glasgow. By the time I was at secondary school in the mid-1980s, however, Cumbernauld Town Centre was a computer-games-buying destination for lots of local kids. In fact, when I did go there, I’d be surprised if I didn’t see some familiar faces, perusing, and sometimes even buying the wares.
I remember seeing a friend’s older brother testing and then buying Ocean’s Gift from the Gods for the Spectrum. It looked OK, but if I remember correctly, the reviews weren’t stellar – which was an absolute pre-requisite for spending long-saved pocket money on such a big-ticket item! A couple of weeks later, he approached me in the playground and asked if I wanted to buy it off him. I politely declined.
But let’s take another look at that photo of Menzies. Consider the ambience in the mall in the 1980s. And then look at it now. Sigh…
January 2024: What once was John Menzies is now ‘Pound Mania’. Noice 😦
Menzies was in the large atrium at the very end of the Phase IV strip, which seems to have become known as ‘The Escalator Hall’. Why? Because that’s where the escalators were, of course. Check this out:
This photo was taken around 1986. Look at the place! Look at the decor! Look at the people! There’s olde worlde streetlamps, hanging gardens – and not a shell suit in sight! Finding it on the internet was a bit of a shock. Believe it or not, I was actually there on the day it was taken. When I first saw it, I even thought I was in it! You see that wee guy standing at the edge of the balcony at the top-centre? That could well have been me. That’s exactly where I used to stand when I was waiting for my parents to emerge from the shops. It even looks a bit like I did. But if you zoom right in, it seems like he’s wearing glasses, which I didn’t have back then. Oh well.
On meditating, I distinctly remember walking past a camera on a tripod on my way upstairs that day – quite an unusual sight. And seeing my favourite spot gazzumped, shuffled off to the other shops behind. I suspect I might have been off to Toymaster to see if they still had any Citadel miniatures in stock. Spoiler, they very rarely did.
Here’s the same spot now. A sterile, soulless nothing. The Kopper Kettle cafe survived at least into the 2010s, but even that’s gone now. Sad times.
All of these photos were taken on Saturdays. But look at the difference. In 1986, it was packed. In 2024, not so much. The black-and-white image below is a bit later, c. 1991, but there’s still a throng.
As far as I know, Toymaster has been gone for decades. And truth be told, I can’t remember exactly where it was. But I do know it was somewhere upstairs – because, when you went in, there were stairs down to a lower level. That’s where they kept the good stuff: the models, the milliput, and – when they had them – the lead-based mini-figs! My memory is fuzzy, but I suspect it wasn’t too far away from here:
Which I believe is captured in the shot, below. The Gym at the end has partitioned off the old corridor.
Teviot Walk
If you were driving, the main way into ‘Phase IV’ of the Town Centre (no-one actually called it that #IRL) was from the carpark at the eastern end – to the left of the roundabout in the picture below. Nowadays, it’s been ‘augmented’ with a huge feature entrance.
To begin with, the area to the left of the entrance was a supermarket – initially, the Scottish retailer, William Low. My parents rarely went there. But I do remember one ocassion on a Friday evening after school in the autumn of 1983. As a reward for helping out (or was it as a bribe to stop me pestering them?), I was allowed one of the new 500 ml cans of Coca Cola!!! Remember them? If that wasn’t memorable enough, I enjoyed it in my brother and my bedroom a bit later on while watching the must-see new TV show on our tiny black-and-white TV – The A-Team!!! It wasn’t until 1984, that the show moved to its more familiar Saturday tea-time slot.
A few years later, when the shop was taken over by Tesco, there was a bit of a teenage gold rush. The new shopping trolleys were coin-operated, you see. You had to feed a 20 pence piece into the handlebars to release them from their trolley prison. Until the customers cottoned on to what was happening, there was a gang of helpful young men offering to take empty trolleys back to the cage, then trousering the 20p. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t last.
Walking in past the supermarket on the way to Menzies took you along Teviot Walk, and past all manner of top-tier retail outlets. Jewellery, underwear, sausages, you name it. Between them, they had it all. Or at least, they had the limited selection of ‘all’ that their tiny footprints gave them space to keep in stock.
Here and below, some black-and-white images of Teviot Walk looking in away from the entrance, c. 1990.
A bit further in and you’d pass Michael Snowden’s beautiful sculptures. They brought a level of sophistication to Cumbernauld Town Centre in the 1980s and 1990s, which I haven’t seen in the years since. That makes it all the more depressing that in 2024, the self-same sculptures have been dumped in the smokers’ garden outside ‘Spoons – (dis)tastefully suqeezed between the carpark and the dual-carriageway. Michael’s still with us – and in his 90s. I hope nobody’s told him.
Shops from yesteryear. Remember when you could buy shoes, washing machines and artisan pies in your local shopping mall? This shot looks along Teviot Walk towards the front entrance of Cumbernauld Town Centre, ‘Phase IV’.
When I went to visit the Town Centre in late January 2024, there had just been two major storms. They’d caused some major damage to the roof – some of which had collapsed down in to the mall! With the affected area covering most of Teviot Walk, it was closed off with substantial barriers at both ends – making it difficult to get convincing modern-day photos from the same angles. I did my best, but I might have to go back at some point before they knock it all down and try again!
Look at the state of this place compared to 1990 & 1987. Where are you supposed to sit and have a chat? Squeezed into the pound-a-play kiddies’ rides apparently.A rare colour photo of Teviot Walk from 1987 looking in towards the escalator hall, aka Teviot Square.
By the summer of 1986, my Spectrum was getting a bit long in the tooth, but still going strong. I’d taken a bit of a risk getting a new game from my mum’s Freeman’s catalogue – Elite’s conversion of Capcom’s Ghosts’n’Goblins no less – when tragedy struck.
I’d borrowed a back-up copy of the dreadful Sai Combat, and was dutifully sai-ing my opponents to pieces. Apart from the sense of disappointment with the game itself, that probably wouldn’t have been a problem for most folks. But I was playing the spectrum on the technical drawing board perched atop my bed. And so grimly determined was I to enjoy the game, that I inadvertently shoogled the machine to the edge of the board, where the Rampack fell out, bricking the machine 😦
Sadly, that wasn’t quite the end of that. You see, I still had 10 instalments left to pay on Ghosts’n’Goblins. Ultimately, however, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. That Christmas, I was given a Commodore 64C, introducing me to the world of hardware sprites, graphics utilities, and the mesmerising tones of the three-channel SID sound chip.
Ettrick Square
Visits to Cumbernauld slowed down during my C64 days. But I would occasionally get the bus in to kick about the shops. Part of the attraction was the opportunity to explore the maze-like corridors of the Town Centre.
Ettrick Square / The Escalator Hall, looking down towards Teviot Square, 1990.Ettrick Square / The Escalator Hall, January 2024.
By far the best shops were in Phase IV, and most of those were downstairs. The floor-plans I’ve been able to find are a bit misleading in this respect. Upstairs and beyond Ettrick Square, the so-called Ettrick Walk was all outside – a row of takeaways and the like spread along the back wall of the rooftop carpark.
List of shops at some point around the mid 1990s. Note: John Menzies and Mothercare are both gone, replaced by Superdrug and Argos respectively. And what’s happened to Megabyte?
One such visit took place in August 1985. I was 13, and had just started S2, when it was announced that the school would be closing for a teachers’ strike! Not wanting to cross any picket lines, I arrnaged to bunk off to Cumbernauld with a pal to see what was happening, most likely on the actual bus shown in the photo below.
We went on the usual circuit of shops starting with the newsagents, RS McColl. Unusually, they had a copy of White Dwarf magazine. But only the one, which we both wanted. As a compromise, we decided to leave it on the shelf, and see if there were more in John Menzies. Surprisingly, there weren’t. Next was a new-ish computer shop, Megabyte, up on Ettrick Square.
Megabyte sold all kinds of computer equipment for home and business use. It usually has the latest software running on its display systems, and a reasonable selection of games, including the affordable Mastertronic titles. They had some pretty decent stock during my Commodore years. But on that day, the title being platformed was Epic’s weird Mattel-doll-simulator, Barbie. The sampled speech was pretty impressive for those days. But even if the game itself had been outstanding, and even if we’d had the money to buy it, there is NO WAY we’d have been caught dead buying a game about Barbie dolls!
After a trip to Toymaster, and the realisation that there was nothing worthwhile buying that we could actually afford to buy, a steely decision was made. We’d have to run back to RS McColl so the winner could lay claim to its solitary copy of White Dwarf.
It was a close run thing, but in the end, the prize was mine. I still have it to this day!
The End of an Era
I thoroughly enjoyed my time with the C64. I may have been a bit late to the Commodore party, but that had its advantages. By the time I got there, there was a ready-made pool of classic games, with additions pouring in so thick and fast that it never ran dry. Come the summer of 1987, however, there were some serious rumblings in the force. The Amiga 500 had rang the doorbell, and was stood there on the doorstep, bold as brass, and waiting impatiently to be let in. In short, it was very hard to ignore.
Of course, we’d all known about the Amiga for a couple of years by that point. It made it’s debut on the BBC’s Micro Live TV show back in 1985. It was an order of magnitude better than the C64 in every possible way. The ‘launch’ title, Defender of the Crown looked absolutely phenomenal. But it was so incredibly expensive, that it was only ever going to be a fantasy computer. The A500 was different. Not only was it much cheaper, but if you believed the marketing hype coming from every conceivable angle, you could also benefit from a hefty discount – if you took out your wallet and acted NOW!
I had to sigh. Like everyone else, I desperately wanted one of these, but I was skint. And there was no way I’d be getting one mere months after I’d been lucky enough to receive a C64. Asking for one would have been neither reasonable nor diplomatically wise. So I resolved to enjoy the 64 for now, keep an eye on Amiga developments, and save up for a possible purchase at some point in the very distant future.
A year later, in the late summer of 1988, I was still waaay short of my target. I’d known I would be, but everything was in hand. I just had to sell my C64 stuff for a reasonable price and add the proceeds to the pot, and I’d at least be within sight. I put an advert in the local classifieds. But there were no takers. I did it a second time, and the same thing happened.
Then there was an ‘incident’.
By now it was October. One evening I was heading out with friends when my much younger sister asked if she could play on the computer. I said OK, but only if dad helped her, which he said he would. But that didn’t pan out quite the way I expected. You see, my poor old dad didn’t have a clue what he was doing. He plugged the power cable into the AV socket, powered-up and bricked the machine. Oh dear 😦
Megabyte, Cmbernauld Town Centre, 1991. This was towards the end of Megabyte’s stint on Ettrick Square. Not long after, it was gone 😦
The solution this time round was to get the machine repaired. The one place relatively locally that I knew that might be able to do it was Megabyte in Cumbernauld Town Centre. So we took the machine in and explained what had happened. The guy in the shop wasn’t too hopeful, and said he’d have to send it off to a specialist, who might or might not be able to revive it. He also said the soonest he could send it off would be the courier pick-up next Tuesday. All in – it would probably take a couple of weeks, but he’d give us a call after the preliminary diagnosis, so we knew what to expect price-wise. It all sounded very reaosnable and sensible. So we left it with him.
3 weeks later, there had still been no phone call. We checked, of course, and apparently, there had been a backlog, which was frustrating, but fair enough. Fast forward another couple of weeks – and still nothing, with the same reason given, which was even more frustrating. A week after that, my increasingly irked dad phoned up to ask for the machine back repaired or not, at which point the owner asked us to come into the shop.
Why?
There was no machine to hand back!!!!!!!
It turned out that 5 weeks previously, as promised, he’d packaged the machine, and left it out the back of the shop for the courier. Only the courier never took it. In the 20 minutes before pick-up it was STOLEN!!!!
In the circumstances, the only acceptable solution was to offer us the full, wholesale price of the machine in compensation. That wasn’t the same as the retail price, but it was a LOT more than I could ever have hoped to get by selling it second hand.
I stood there agog.
I was doing mental arithmetic so fast that the folks round about must have been able to hear the cog-wheels spinning! This meant I had almost the right amount of money for an A500 FA-18 Interceptor pack!!! After a quick discussion with my dad, he agreed to make up the last little bit as a Christmas present. The owner asked if I wouldn’t prefer an Atari ST with its bundle of 20 games. I felt insulted! A deal was done on the Amiga, and the machine taken home – on the condition that I wouldn’t get my hands on it until the 25th of December.
All’s well that end well, eh readers?
And, of course, I was able to ‘check’ the Amiga a couple of times before the big day, when my parents were out!
The Thistle Centre, Stirling, 1981 and 2024. Just through the Port-Street entrance was Stirling’s 2-floor branch of John Menzies – the source of my copy of Operation Wolf for the Commodore Amiga. For a tour through Stirling in the Golden Age of Video Arcade games, surf on over to this post, here.
Epilogue
Hope you enjoyed my travels through Cumbernauld Town Centre in the 8-Bit Era. As always, I’d be really interested to hear about your own experiences of this stuff. Maybe you’ve got some photos you could share?
You go here to get high. It’s an airfield.Irn Bru Factory. They make it from grrrdrrrs, you know.
Where?
Well, it’s a town slap, bang in the middle of Scotland’s Central Belt: a town that boasts an airfield, an Irn Bru Factory and one of the country’s first recognised megastructures.
What’s it called….?
If you’re Ronnnie Corbet, voicing the long-running TV advert for the place in the ’80s and ’90s, it’s ‘Cumbrrrrnawled’.
To anyone who’s actually lived near it, however, it will always be ‘Cummer nudd’. Tricky? To get it right, you need to say it forcefully, bordering on aggressively, with a heavy emphasis on the ‘nudd’ bit at the end. Try it again… There you go! ‘Cummernudd’!
Kilsyth Main Street – aka ‘Down the Town’ – c. 1980. A few short years later, the place was bristling with arcade machines!
I’m not from Cumbernauld. As we established a few posts back, I grew up in the neighbouring town of Kilsyth – a smaller, sleepier, and hillier place, about 5 miles to the Northwest. But Cumbernauld, and its various retail outlets played an important part in my digital evolution. It offered the promise of arcade experiences, and a gateway to the world of home computing so pivotal to my own journey, that am gunna havta talk about it here, and in the first few posts of my forthcoming ‘Fizzy Pixels’ series of blogposts.
In preparation for today’s Odyssey I’ve only gone and been to Cumbernauld. Not just in my memory, or the internet, but #IRL!!!
Don’t worry! I escaped more or less unscathed. And the best bit is that I now have an SD card full of nostalgia-drenched photos to share with you. I’m not just talking about ‘now’ shots either – but a bunch of ‘then’ shots from back-in-the-day too! This is exciting stuff, people!
Fair warning: This is a nostalgia trip with video-game related colour. While there is arcade content here, we’re going to focus on the venues that weren’t. To find out what I mean by that, you’ll have to read on. But I’m hoping the journey will inspire you cling on tightly to my time-traveling surf board as I ride that wave of nostalgia to the before times, and the world of 8-bit micro computers.
To do it all the justice it deserves, we’re gunna need to start with some proper context.
Cumbernauld
Cumbernauld Village in 1898, 1950, & c. 2015.
There’s been a small village at Cumbernauld since at least the 13th century, when it started appearing in maps and charters. That’s not why it’s called Cumbernauld. The name doesn’t signal that the place is ‘auld’ (Note to Englanders, that’s how we say ‘old’). It’s from the Gaelic, *Comar nan allt, meaning ‘Place where the streams meet’. Bet that’s some #education you weren’t expecting, eh?
Cumbernauld Town Centre, straddling the A8011, January 2024
After the War, the green fields to the west of the Village were earmarked as the site for one of Scotland’s five ‘new towns’. Three decades of frenzied building later, they had disappeared under a sprawling complex of dormitory suburbs, orbiting an enormous brutalist ‘megastructure’. Seriously, that’s how it’s described by the architects’ association, RIBA.
To be absolutely clear, that doesn’t make it a ‘good thing’!
Objectively speaking, however, it’s fair to say that by the 1970s, Cumbernauld had been transformed. The charming village that was had been stripped of its name in the maelstrom of gleaming white harling and concrete. When the dust finally settled, the place now known as Cummernudd was exponentially bigger, and the longstanding dynamic between the village and the neighbouring town definitively turned on its head. Kilsyth with it’s 10,000 souls had once been a market town and a burghal centre – a hub for trade, commerce and administration, now it was very much the junior partner.
Cumbernauld New Town had muscled up to 50,000 men, women and weans (sounds like ‘waynes’: from ‘wee anes’, ‘bairns’, kids). With the local government reorganisation of 1976, when Scotland’s counties were abolished, it also came to house the lion share of Council offices and amenities (NB: online retailers, did you read that? Scotland doesn’t have counties, and hasn’t had any for 50 years. Stop making us fill in that box on your stupid forms!).
Kilsyth folk didn’t like that.
There was a general feeling that Cumbernauld got unfair advantages and special treatment, that poor old Kilsyth badly needed but never enjoyed.
You don’t need to take my word for that. Kilsyth’s local newspaper, The Kilsyth Chronicle, had been amalgamated with The Cumbernauld News. So, the locals got to read about what was happening in both places, and complain about it all in one convenient forum!
Having read through these materials, it’s clear to me that Cumbernauld did benefit from disproportionately large investment, supported by tax breaks, and some fairly ambitious and innovative planning. But that wasn’t because of corruption in the local authority – regardless of what the gossips were saying. It reflected something the gossips didn’t understand – the practical realities of running a ‘New Town’ as legislated by Westminster, and managed by the Cumbernauld Development Corporation, which had been set up to oversee the project.
Cumbernauld had a small cinema, where I went for an occasional helping of ’70’s shovel-ware, of the Herbie or Cat from Outer Space variety. There was also a theatre, which hosted a never-ending stream of national, local, and youth-group-type performances. Check out the promo for this 1982 show, ‘B’roo-ing’. ‘B’roo’ was what the previous generation had called the (Unemployment) Bureau – ie. the place you went to get your dole cheque. So, clearly, the issues covered were right up-to-date!
Sounds like the kids had fun. As you can see, details on the play itself are scant, but I’m guessing it was an uplifting tale of empowerment, where the disadvantaged and forgotten yoof of Cummernudd, somehow found the strength to succeed in life by turning their backs on poisonous distractions - like puggies and video arcade games. AAARRRRGH! What were they playing at!? It was the ’80s kids! You were supposed to be dissing Thatcher, not the aracde machines! Oh well, at least they were able to get hold of some actual video-games cabinets for props. And let’s face it, that’s probably the best UFO is fit for.
Of even greater interest was the swimming pool and sports complex called the Tryst. For a while, in the early 1980s, Kilsyth Primary School would bus its older pupils there and back of a Friday afternoon for the obligatory swimming lessons – presumably to minimise our chances of drowning when we went for a paddle in the King’s Lynn, up the Glen, or one of the abandoned quarries.
The tryst was great. Not only was it a venue for swimming, basketball and karate competitions, it was also a source of cheeky portions of chips. Sadly, and unlike many similar venues bitd, what it made up for in sportiness, it lacked in ‘spacies’. To the best of my memory, it had none. Not even a Frogger.
But I digress…
The jewel in Cumbernauld’s crown was it’s ever-expanding shopping centre, the Town Centre. Straddling the A8011 dual-carriageway, like an overfed Frenchman squatting over a traditional porcelain toilette, ‘The Centre’ has long attracted a very bad press. In fact, it’s the main reason that Cumbernauld has assembled such an enormous haul of Carbuncle-type awards over the years.
#NGL it ain’t exactly pretty.
It has to be stressed here that the problem is not the people, but the world-leading architects who preferred to make career-enhancing statements rather than places which are nice to live and work, or even, dare I say, functional. Flat roofs and concrete are never a particularly good look imho, but when you combine them with the relentless cold and damp of the Scottish climate, and the inevitable build up of slime and grime, you can kindof understand why the locals feel so resentful. To their general relief, and despite a cack-handed attempt by Historic Environment Scotland to get the place listed, the Council has now acquired the entirety of the megastructure, with the aim of demolishing it, and replacing it with a modern community hub. Thank goodness I got in there with my camera first!
As you can see from this montage of photos from the 60s to the present, not a lot has changed. Having said that, I always found the Town Centre to be a strangely optimistic place. But that could well be because I stopped going there in the early 1990s, a few years before things really started going downhill. In any case, I have fond memories of driving up there with my parents in the 1970s. Usually on wet Saturdays. Our destination was the now-demolished Woolco superstore – an out-of-town Woolworths on steroids.
Woolco! The grassy area in the foreground disappeared under Phase IV of the Town Centre, which opened in 1981.
Originally opening in 1975, Woolco was a giant department store that sold clothes, household goods, sports equipment, toys, and groceries – virtually everything and anything at which you could shake the proverbial stick. While my parents rounded up the week’s messages (‘food shopping’), my brother and I were released into the aisles to keep ourselves a) occupied and b) out of their way.
The checkouts at Woolco in Cumbernauld not long after it first opened, c. 1976.
We automatically gravitated towards the toy and book department. In the early days, we’d check out the toy cars, the Lego, and the Airfix kits. If I could work up the courage, I’d sometimes leaf through the Ladybird edition of Dracula or Frankenstein – fascinated and frightened in equal measure by the scary illustrations. Years later, in 1984, on one of the last visits I remember, I bought myself a paperback copy of the Return of the King for the princely sum of £1.95. Check out the picture below – it’s the actual book!
Of course, the toys would only hold our attention for so long, before the wanderlust set in. It was then that we first noticed the Death Star-style security cameras – those black hemispheres where you could never tell which way the camera was pointing? Mission Impossible-type spy shenanigans ensued.
Come the early 80s, the home entertainment landscape began to change. In response, Woolco introduced a counter of electronic games and consoles. Look at those prices! The top two are from The Kilsyth Chronicle, Thursday, 4th of November, 1982 (pp. 3 & 11), the bottom image from Thursday, 10th May, 1984 (p. 3)
It was here that I first encountered the mighty Vectrex.
Best 80s action movie ever? Check out my investigation into Commando, Rambo and the origins of Operation Wolf.
For those of you who don’t know, the Vectrex was a cartridge-based video-games console originally released in 1982. It’s USP was a built-in 10″ CRT screen, which displayed vector rather than raster graphics. That means the lines were completely smooth rather than blocky, but with no curves. While the graphics were monochrome, colour effects – of sorts – were achieved with the help of coloured acetate overlays. Cutting edge stuff! Or maybe not.
I bought myself a Vectrex a few years ago, mainly off the back of recent homebrew releases, some of which are absolutely stunning. For my money, Kristof Tuts’ Vector Pilot and Vector Patrol are amongst the best – taking the arcade versions of Time Pilot and Moon Patrol, and making them even better! But that’s partly because they cheat, by using memory management techniques and other tricks not available to the first generation of programmers. The most extreme example of this is the mind-boggling VecFever cartridge, which by-passes the Vectrex’s circuitry completely, using it as monitor to output spookily faithful renditions of early ’80s arcade games like Asteroids and Star Wars.
In 1982, there wasn’t even a hint of a suggestion that this would be possible. In fact, to be absolutely honest, it’s prospects didn’t look particularly good. Now, don’t get me wrong, If I had been given a Vectrex back then, I’m sure I would have played it for a bit. But truth be told, it was fairly obvious – even then – that if was little more than a glorified toy – a slightly fancier version of the single-screen VFD games we were all familiar with. It was also extremely expensive for what it was – with games costing way more than most parents would have been happy replacing at the rate their kids got bored of them. That was the view of ten-year-old me. But I clearly wasn’t alone. It wasn’t long before the system bombed.
After months of gathering dust on the shelf, Woolco’s hoard were slashed to £50. But even at that price, no one would touch them. By that point, the ZX Spectrum had taken off, and – as we’ll see in Fizzy Pixels, £50 would have bought you a heck of lot of blank tapes.
But that was then. And things have changed. These days Vectrexes – Vectrices? Vectri? – sell for a pretty penny on eBay. A tidy, boxed specimen could set you back £400 or more.
Looking back, it’s one of those ‘tardis’ scenarios. You know the kind? If you had a tardis, and a bag of period bank-notes, you could nip back and grab yourself a pallet’s worth of the remaindered consoles for cheaps. Better still, you could wait until they didn’t sell and were being driven to the tip, then offered the skip driver a case of Tenents larger for the lot of them, and retired off the eBay profits. Mind you, if you knew where the tip was, you could probably still excavate a few today. Sand-damaged E.T. cartridge anyone? No thanks, I’ll take a composted Vectrex instead, please!
Things started to go wrong for Woolco in the mid-1980s. Too much competition you see. Although we didn’t realise it at the time, the signs were there from 1984. Increasingly heavy advertising in The Chronicle, was probably one of them. By 1986, it had closed.
Asda, Cumbernauld, 1991.
The building itself was used for a few more years – first by Gateway, then ASDA – who kept the popular Red Grill cafe going, pretty much until the end. By the mid-1990s, however, not even ASDA could make the site work. When it finally closed it doors, the building was demolished, ultimately being replaced by the eastern end of the ‘new’ Antonine Centre.
Now you see it…
Now you don’t 😦The old Woolco site from the opposite side – 27th January, 2024.
One of the reasons for the demise of Woolco, and the unit it occupied, was the continued growth of of Cumbernauld Town Centre. Of course, when it opened in 1975, Woolco had benefitted from integration into the existing mall. At the point where the two joined, customers could enjoy the spectacle of the giant clock from the old St Enoch station in Glasgow, which once linked the area to the metropolis.
On my recent visit, I was excited to learn that the clock was still on display. Unfortunately, thanks to the damage caused by January’s high winds, quite a lot of the Centre was locked down or otherwise inaccessible. While my legs are long enough, and my neck brassy enough to ignore out-of-bounds signs, that didn’t help to unlock the doors to the installation. So, the closest I got this time round was the mural in the corridor outside.
By 1981 the Mega-Structure had expanded into Phase 4. And that was a game changer. I remember those buildings going up, and the sense of anticipation about all the new shops that would be moving in. But we’ll return to those, and the promised photos in the next blogpost. Right now, it’s time to focus on…
The arcade that wasn’t!
If the retro games press had their way, 1983 and 1984 would forever be associated with the ‘Great Video Games Crash’. Apparently that’s when the ground gave way under the over-heated home and arcade scene in the USA, forcing manufacturers like Atari to bury huge amounts of unsellable stock in the desert.
That didn’t happen in the part of Scotland were I grew up.
On the contrary, 1983 is precisely when we experienced an almost magical boom in both arcade and home video-gaming. Sales of old-fashioned cartridge-based had certainly stalled, but hardly anyone was buying them anyway. This was when sales of the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 really started to soar. As for the arcades, while the US market may well have become over-saturated with dedicated cabinets designed to play single games, venues in Scotland operated a more ‘homely’ business model, based on generic cabinets, and illegally imported bootleg PCBs. Between 1982 and 1984, the number of video-arcades in my own small town, increased from a disappointing zero to three! That’s not to say, however, that we weren’t eager for more.
As mentioned earlier, the good citizens of Kilsyth kept abreast of developments in Cumbernauld, through their shared newspaper, The Kilsyth Chronicle (and Cumbernauld News). In early 1984, there were murmerings of something big in the arcade world – rumours which I’ve since been able to flesh out with a bit of digging in the archived minutes of Cumbernauld & Kilsyth District Council.
In their meeting of 10th of February 1984, the Coonsil’s agenda included an item titled ‘Amusement Arcade Town Centre’. They were to seek opinion on the Cumbernauld Development Corporation’s plan for an amusement arcade in the town centre, housing up to 60 machines, with ‘video machines’ at the front adjacent to a ‘soda fountain’, whatever that was supposed to be. There were concern that this might damage a market already served by the County Bingo venue, which was licenced to carry 40 ‘amusement with prizes’ machines.
While further detail is lacking, the plans became a lot clearer, and a lot more exciting in the Coonsil meeting of 12th March. The agenda this time included an item on the ‘Proposed conversion of former Templeton Unit in Phase II for use as a ‘Leisureplex”. Yes, you read that right, ‘Leisureplex’. Lol!
The Development Corporation went on to explain that 2/3 of the arcade would be set aside for ‘videos’, and 1/3 for gaming machines. This gaming machine area would moreover be separated, manned and supervised at all times. What that means, dear readers, is that Cummernudd was looking at a venue with 40 video arcade games! In 1984! Can you imagine that?!!! That’s Blackpool or Scarborough levels of excitment!!!
The planning went from strength to strength.
On the 13th of June, the project was granted a Public Entertainment Licence for a ‘Soft drinks parlour and amusement arcade at Tweed / Tay Walks in Cumbernauld Town Centre’. Then, on the 3rd of September, a licence was issued under the Gaming Act 1968, ensuring that machines with prizes could be legally sited provided that: 1) No child under 16 years of age was to be admitted unless accompanied by an adult, and 2) No child wearing a school uniform was admitted during school hours.
The minutes noted there were ‘no objections’, but that didn’t stop the miserable hack from the Chronicle putting a negative spin on it.
On the 13th of September, he reported that the Leisure Centre was only given a ‘reluctant go-ahead’. Note the emphasis given to McElroy’s strangely contradictory ramble about the ‘great deal of support throughout the community for a facility of this nature’, but the development being somehow ‘worrying’. Sigh. What an old Elmer.
Kilsyth Chronicle, Thursday 13th September 1984, p. 6.
Without the benefit of some photos it’s difficult to imagine where this ‘Leisureplex’ might have been. But look what I’ve found!
Templeton’s supermarket, Phase II, Some time in the late 1970s / early 1980s.
As a supermarket, Templeton’s covered a fair amount of floor space. It also straddled one of the entrances to the Town Centre, which meant that it could theoretically stay open after the shopping mall itself had closed for the evening. If you take a look at the view looking inside, and the view from the outside, below, you’ll see the area linked together by the pub, Bar Yellow.
Bar Yellow on the inside.Bar Yellow on the outside.
With a build-up like this, the arcade was bound to be absolutely, world-turningly awesome. And you’ll no doubt be keen to know how it worked out – which games from 1984 and 1985 made the cut, where they could be found in the venue, and what, exactly the mysterious ‘soda fountain’ arrangement involved. Well, so would I. Because, you see, as far as I know, it never happened 😦
In the end, the owners seem to have pivoted into a simple, common or garden bar, sinking the bulk of their efforts into the re-developing the loading bay underneath into a nightclub – the late, lamented Papa Docs.
A year later, in September 1985, The Chronicle celebrated the opening of Papa Docs with a full-page spread. As you can see in the adverts surrounding the blurb, half the contractors in Cumbernauld were involved in the project. Whether they were paid in cash, or free drinks at the bar is anyone’s guess!
Kilsyth Chronicle, Thursday 11th September 1985, p.12.
While this came as a bitter disappointment to my 13-year-old self, it wasn’t that long before I was visiting Papa Doc’s myself. I preferred the Sax rock bar at the other end of the building, in the top floor of what is now ‘Spoon’s Carrick Stone pub. While Sax closed at 1 am. PD’s kept going to at least 3, and you know, ‘needs must’ etc. But that’s another story…
Former Sax venue on the roof of Phase IV, now the top floor of the local ‘Spoons.Alluring entrance to the once notorious Papa Docs nightclub.
Epilogue
So there you have it. While I know there were arcade machines in Cumbernauld back in the early 1980s, I only saw them used as props in an advert for a youth theatre production in 1982. And despite advanced plans for a 40-cab amusement arcade, with ‘soda fountain’, in the old Templeton’s supermarket, that particular bottle of pop went flat before it was even opened. Sad times indeed. Somebody pass a tiss-shoe.
Did you grow up in Cumbernauld? Did you visit it in the 1980s? Do you remember any actual arcade machines out in the wild? If so, please leave a note in the comments below and help add a happy ending to this tale of woe.
Coming Next…
This Arcade Eco-System series has already covered the most important (!) parts of central Scotland from 1982 to 1995. If you haven’t seen them already, feel free to explore the links below. But even if you have, please do go back and add the conversation. I’m really keen to fill the gaps in my memory before it finally starts to wear out:
The next part in the series will see us head back east to Auld Reekie, where I relocated in 1995. For the time being, however, we’ll be sticking with Cummernudd!
Stay tuned for Fizzy Pixels – Part 1: The ZX Spectrum.
Time to face facts folks. I’m starting to get old. Not that I’m feeling too decrepit or anything. Physically, I’m still in my prime.
👌
It seems, though, that I’m moving further and further out of time.
What do I mean? We’ll, it’s my hobbies, my taste in music, my politics – they all mark me out as a bit of a dinosaur, apparently.
Nossir, neither rock music, nor arcade video games, not an unstintingly egalitarian and social democratic approach to equality and fairness appear to be en vogue at the moment. Urrgh. Can you imagine the black and white tragedy of my formative years?
Well, yoof of today, I’ve got news for you. I grew up in 625 lines of colour, not in the past, but on the edge of the future. Things were exciting, with the promise of getting better. We had 2000 AD, Zzap 64, Star Wars, Star Trek, action hero adventures, New Romantic music, heavy metal, Citadel Miniatures, and the Video Arcade. How about you put that in your vape and ‘smoke’ it?
I have some surprisingly vivid memories of those early years – of people, places, stuff that I did: things that happened almost half a century ago! If I can find a calm space, I can conjour up the world from when I was three. I don’t remember that I was three, but the detail means that I must have been.
If I’m honest with myself, what I’m actually channeling are memories of memories from a long time ago. And they survive, in my head, as isolated vignettes – a bit like wee reels of film.
Inevitably, I suppose, some of them are getting a bit worn and faded. But sometimes, a scent or sight will bring them springing back to life – extending the scene to the world outside the frame.
In terms of my recollections of The Before Times, that’s basically where I’m at: Shelves full of film. My worry is that as more and more of them get added at one side, others will get pushed off the other!
I’m not the first person to think about memories like this. A slightly more paranoid version of my story was brought to the big screen by the director Ridley Scott in his 1982 adaptation of Phillip K. Dick’s novel, Blade Runner. In between wowing us with its stylised, dystopian cityscapes, Blade Runner explores the question of what it is to be human.
Cherished memories play an important part in our conception of ‘self’. In the movie, those feelings are externalised, with the replicants clinging onto memories like polaroids. They feel these are what makes them human. But their memories aren’t real. In some cases, all they have are the polaroids.
It doesn’t really matter, though. Regardless of whether we’re dealing with actual polaroids, or a series of brief video recordings, the replicants’ repository of memories have been curated by their creators in the Weyland Corporation.
I’m pretty sure I’m not a replicant. And I reckon I can sleep soundly in the knowledge that my memories are real. But I do have a few that burn suspiciously brightly. I’ve written about 1976 before. I have another recurring memory from 1977, or maybe the year after. Either way, I’m fairly certain it reflects an early morning in May – a day when I woke up so brimming with joy and excitement, I was convinced that something special was about to happen, that it must have been Christmas. It wasn’t. But more about that later.
I’m not a religious person. I have issues with organised religion, which not so long ago would have been seen as progressive. Not so much now 😢
What I am happy to indulge in, however, is a bit of spiritual speculation. What if this isn’t our first paper round? What if we’ve spun round this mortal coil before? Maybe dozens of times? Maybe hundreds? And if we do slot back in again after we’ve taken our allotted spin round the block, when does it happen? Right back at the start? Somewhere a bit further down the track?
For me, the point of re-entry would have to be that ancient May morning. Why? I’ve written a poem about it. Enjoy!
This post will be a short one, but I’m gonna share it anyway because of what it represents…
As an arcade experience, it’s the equivalent of biting into a KitKat and discovering it’s chocolate all the way through. Or maybe that should be biting into a Malteaser, and finding there’s no honeycomb centre?
Why?
‘Coz this latest ramble is all about Malta.
Where is Malta?
Right. Now that we’re all here, can everyone who’s been to Malta please sit down…
Now, those of you still standing, can you point to Malta on this map?
What, no one?
Lol!
Don’t worry, until the beginning of this year, I would have been the last man standing. I’d heard of Malta, of course. Mainly due to it being mentioned in the Eurovision Song Contest. And I was aware that it was an island somewhere in the Med.
Malta is here!
Turns out that the island of Malta is between Sicily and Tunisia.
If, like me, you live under a flat stone in the rain-soaked glens of Pictavia, Malta is the perfect destination for a blast of light, heat and culture in the early spring – just when you’re starting to think that the sun is never coming back.
When we departed Edinburgh airport at the end of March, the temperature was way down in single digits. Typically for that (or any) time of year, there was also standing water in the sky. On arriving at Valletta airport later that evening, however, it was dry and – despite being well after sunset – still a good 19°C. The next few days were mostly sunny, with the mercury nudging 23°C in the afternoon. For me, that’s Goldilock’s territory. Not so hot you’re going to be melting into your Sketchers, and not too cold to walk about comfortably without a jacket. Just right!
Although it’s a small island, Malta doesn’t have many beaches. Instead, it’s famous for its sheltered bays and harbours. Over the centuries, the millennia even, they’ve helped to establish the island as a nodal point in international trade and commerce. Its ports were expanded and fortified by a series of powerful incomers, including the Romans, the Moors, the Knights of St John, and the British. It’s all very Game-of-Thronesy, or Napoleony – if you’ve been to see that yet?
During the Second World War, protecting Malta from the Germans, and keeping it supplied through a fierce Nazi blockade were key to securing the Allied advance into Sicily, and then the Italian Mainland.
In short, Malta has a lot of history. It’s also very built up, and possibly the mostly densely populated country on the planet. To be honest, you wouldn’t want to be driving a car down there. But thankfully, you don’t have to.
The bus network is phenomenal, linking every part of the island with frequent services. For locals it’s also totally free. But even visitors only pay EUR 2 for all but the fastest express buses. That means it’s easy and cheap to get about. So, there’s no excuse for not seeing the sights.
I had really wanted to visit the Hypogeum at Ħal Saflieni – a multi-level, underground ritual complex dating back to 4000 BC. Sadly, even although I checked for tickets a month before going, it was already fully-booked until the autumn! Never mind though. I was able to take in Hagar Qim and Mnajdra instead, after a nifty little boat tour round the Blue Grotto.
It was also super easy to nip down to the Sunday market at Marsaskala on the SE coast, and in to the ancient citadel of Mdina in the middle of the island.
But there’s also tonnes to do in Valletta itself. There are museums, galleries, cafes, bistros and bars aplenty. There were plenty of places to eat, with the standard price for a good quality meal being about EUR 20 a head. Burgers and chips were cheaper, but the local specialities seemed to be rabbit, and octopus. Given the island’s location, it wasn’t too surprising to find out that there’s also a lot of Italian influence. If octopus isn’t your thing, there’s pizza and pasta on tap! Just as well, really. It’s easy to work up an appetite in Valleta. The gorgeous old streets are a pleasure to explore. There are also city walls to conquer, and gardens and parks aplenty where you can kick back and catch your breath.
If you get tired of walking there’s a massive lift down from the citadel to the water line, and a series of speedy boats to take you across to Sliema, and the other parts of the Three-Cities area.
Arkadia: Merchants St, Valletta VLT 1175, Malta.
One thing that there doesn’t seem to be in the ancient heart of Valletta, is a cheap supermarket. Yes, the city has several Lidls etc. but they’re all a boat ride or bus trip away. According to GoogleMaps, there was meant to be one very near where I was staying. The alluringly-named ‘Arkadia’ foodstore. I went looking for it on my first night, but couldn’t find it.
Was that just me being daft? Probably. In my defence, however, the main part of the building that you enter from the street is filled with a food court selling all kinds of yummy street foods. So it was easy to get distracted. It turned out that out the supermarket was actually hidden from sight downstairs in the basement. It wasn’t the most economical, but it did have a wide range of ‘interesting’ seafood!
I bought a few bits, mainly for the bag, and sauntered back to the appartment for a snack and a snooze.
On passing by again the next day, something at the back of my head told me to look up. It must have been the ultra-sonic, siren song of the CRT. Because on straining my ageing eyes at the first-floor windows, that’s exactly what I saw!!!
Making my excuses, I zoomed in, bounded up the escalator, accelerated through the swanky bar area, and careered round the corner into a… deserted amusement arcade! What a real blast from holidays past. There was the ubiquitous air hockey and pool table, the usual weird gambling game, and several old-school CRT-based video-arcade cabinets!!! OK, so the racers were (imho) a bit ‘meh’. But there, at the heart of it all, was a testament to the high art of the fizzy pixel. Perhaps the very last-flush of the Golden Age of video-game entertainment. Not just a Time Crisis, but the best of all the time crises, Time Crisis II! Joy!
Epilogue
I really enjoyed my trip to Malta. It may only have been for a few days, but the weather, and the ambience were terrific. Finding an old-school arcade in a public place was the cherry on top of the icing on the cake. It may not have been Rygar or Raiden, but in this day and age, I’m happy to enjoy a bit of a crisis out in the wild. If I get the chance, I’ll certainly go back.
Next up? Well, we’ll have to wait and see what the New Year brings. In the meantime, have a very,
Seat of learning, law and government. Scotland’s capital city. Home to Hume, Smith and the Enlightenment in Northern Europe. The Athens of the North! A place so bursting at the seams with history and high culture, that we’re obviously gonna give those things a swerve – and talk about its video arcades instead!
Fancy some ‘Wang Casserole’ from this Edinburgh massage parlour? No? What about some ‘Golden Tea’? Ew.The story of Dun Edin is told by the names of its streets. There’s ‘Cowgate’, and ‘Haymarket’ which recall its farmers’ markets. Then there’s this… Wonder what used to happen here?These are not the t-shirts you seek.Edinburgh has more than its fair share of tourist tat shops. But some of their wears (sic) are rather appealing.
I’ve been stotin’ aboot Embra for a long time. Back in the 90s, I even lived there. But the arcades of that era are something we’ll come back to in Part 4 of my Arcade Eco-System series. (Clickee linkeez for: Kilsyth; Kilsyth Extra – The Archives; Falkirk & Stirling; Glasgow)
These days I visit the place for work, which means I tread a very sorry furrow between the station and my office. In fact, that furrow is now so well-worn that I can barely see over the sides! I’m sure those of you who’ve spent any time commuting will be able to relate 😦
I do occasionally go off-piste. And every now and again, my expeditions through the wilds of Auld Reekie offer up rare glimpses of the city’s dwindling arcade culture. Sadly, that doesn’t happen very often.
An illicit snap from the 2014 Game Masters Exhibition, which very nearly got me ejected!A random 60-in-1 cab that popped up in the Waverley Mall back in 2018.
Back in 2014, there was the ‘Game Masters‘ exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland on Chambers Street. OK, so it was an ‘exhibition’, with a heavy emphasis on education (!), but it was an exhibition which foregrounded a hands-on display of video-games technology, from Pong to Fruit Ninja.
The centre-piece of that collection, for me, was the group of 10 or so Golden-Age arcade cabinets at the entrance. There was Tempest, Asteroids, Donkey Kong, Centipede and a few others. I can’t remember the whole list, ‘coz my archives are bare. For some unfathomable reason, photography was strictly forbidden – as I found out when I pulled out my phone and started to take some pictures. It wasn’t entirely clear how capturing an image or two of some of the most mass-produced consumer games cabinets on the planet might have infringed the organisers’ IP. But there you go.
A few years later, in 2018, I bumped into a random 60-in-1 cabinet while taking a short-cut through the Waverley Shopping Centre. Sadly, I was racing for a train, and didn’t have time for a game. With my ‘madskillz’ it would have taken way too long 😉 Unfortunately, when I eventually did have the time to return for a more leisurely visit, the cabinet was gone. Carpe diem, folks!
In recent years, pinball machines have been more common than arcade cabinets. They sometimes pop up in pubs, cafes and shops. Just before Lockdown, there was a pin-table in the BrewDog Bar on the Cowgate – Judge Dredd if my memory serves me correctly, which it might not, as I was rather refreshed at the time. Whatever it was, whether it’s still there or not is something I’ll have to go back and find out.
At the time of writing (Oct 2023), there are two pins just inside the shopfront of the new HMV on Princes Street. As far as I can work out, this seems to be part of the chain’s business plan. I’ve also seen pins in the new shops in Livingston and Dunfermline.
When it comes to proper arcades, the situation in Edinburgh is even more hit and miss. Back in late 2016 / early 2017 there was a bit of a buzz on the old JAMMA+ forum about a new venue opening at 123 Gilmore place – the Konbo Arcade Cafe. The blurb was tantalising:
‘Edinburgh’s arcade gaming café. We bring Japanese arcade culture to Edinburgh in a comfortable café setting. Enjoy vintage 80s/90s arcade games, combined with quality coffee and fresh food. We also stock Japanese snacks & sodas, plus retro games & gaming merchandise. We run regular gaming tournaments & evening events, and you can even hire our venue with a game selection of your choice! See our website for more details and a full list of our games’.
May 2017: Whoever wrote that sign made a massive mistake. It should have read, ‘Diversion BEGINS here’!
The location – for me personally – was not great. Getting there involved an extended schlepp to the venue, then on to Haymarket afterwards instead of Waverley, which took my station race from less than 20 minutes to about an hour all-in. Being a busy chap at the best of times, I wasn’t able to visit until May 2017.
Konbo Arcade Cafe, May 2018.
But it was worth the wait. Konbo was brilliant. The venue was clean, light, and welcoming. The decor was fresh and relaxing, with plenty of blonde wood and white, and comfortable stools. The refurbished (ie. clean) school-desk tables were a particularly nice touch. Better still, the coffee was not only excellent, but reasonably priced – and there was a varied selection of alluring cakes and other treats. Had it been closer to my place of work, I’d have gone there more often for that reason alone.
The venue was also used for Japanese cultural meetings, and could be hired out for private functions. It even sold Japanese knick-nacks and the odd PC Engine card. But the real ace up Konbo’s sleeve – its USP – was it’s collection of 6 pristine ‘candy’ cabs. There were 3 in the front, and 3 more in the room at the back. The machines were all set up for pay-per-play using tokens bought from the counter. IIrc (!) the exchange rate was four to the pound.
May 2017May 2018
Given the cafe’s Japanese theme, it’ll come as no surprise to learn that Konbo’s cabs were usually fitted with puzzle games and ‘bullet hell’-type shmups of the Cave variety. I have to admit, that the selection didn’t always align with my personal tastes. But they were rotated on a regular basis. And here’s the weird thing – I actually liked going there and finding a whole new suite of gamage on offer, whether I actually wanted to play them all or not! That dynamism was attractive in its own right. Besides, if it wasn’t busy, the owner was happy to swap out the pcbs – and he had a good range of classic titles tucked away in his stash: Raiden, Makaimura – or Ghosts’n’Goblins as we Westerners know it – TMNT and more besides.
May 2017Nov 2018Nov 2018
I didn’t get the chance to visit very often, but always regarded it as a rare treat. In the end, I probably made it 6 or 7 times before that start of 2020, when the good ship Konbo finally went down.
It’s now nearly 4 years since the business was wound up, and with the cabs themselves sold on via the forums. So, there’s no going back. That’s a real loss, and I can’t help but feel a touch guilty that I didn’t visit more often. Perhaps if I – and a few more arcade enthusiasts – had made the effort a bt more often, it might still be open? But life, as you know, gets in the way, and location is crucial for these things. And therein lies a paradox. Perhaps Konbo was such a nice place to visit precisely because it was slightly off the beaten-track, and never usually that busy. Had it been more central, the footfall may have been higher, but would the atmosphere have been the same? We’ll never know. What I can say, however, is that while it lasted, Konbo was definitely ‘a good thing’, and it will certainly be missed.
What about now, then? What about the present day?
‘Arcade’ on Cockburn Street, Edinburgh. It may bear the monniker ‘arcade’, but there’s nary a game in sight…
The fair city of Edinburgh has loads to recommend it. There are literally hunners of things to see and do and spend you hard earned pennies on. The best of them, in my opinion, is the National Museum on Chambers Street. There’s enough in there to keep anyone busy for days. They’ve even got a Roman tent. And the best thing is, it’s free! But there are almost innumerable other museums, galleries, theatres and architecture, as well as restaurants, pubs and shops.
If you’re loaded, and have trouble thinking of ways to spend your money, you could even come round for the Fringe festival in August, where they’ll gleefully bleed you dry while you float slowly from venue to venue on the treacly sea of tourists that flood the city, just as the locals have to get back to work.
NQ64 – 25, Lothian Road, Edinburgh, EH1 2DJ
Arcades, though? What about them? There are places which claim to be arcades, but they don’t have any games in them – unless you count drinking games?
Fast-forward to February 2023. I’d left work late, and was powering through the winter darkness to an evening function at the West-end of Princes Street. To shave a bit off the journey, I took a spur-of-the-moment detour down Lothian Road, where I spotted this – NQ64. Being in a hurry, I barely had time to stop for a photo.
It was a few months before I had the chance to go back and investigate properly.
Having overstayed at an important apres-work ‘business meeting’, I was left with an hour to spare until my next train home. That was enough time to re-route via NQ64 on the way down to Haymarket, and, who knows, if it turned out to be worthwhile, maybe even miss the next train too…
Perhaps I walked too quickly, perhaps I was too refreshed, but that first visit didn’t exactly impress. Although it was still early evening on a weekday, and broad daylight, there were two bouncers on the door – which, until I went in – was the same as the number of customers. That didn’t strike me as particularly welcoming.
Once inside, I could see srtaight away that the place had plenty of cabs, but it was also cavernous, cold and almost entirely modelled out of concrete. Had it not been for the paintwork, the vibe would have been most generously described as ‘underground carpark’. With the concrete daubed in black-lit graffiti, however, a better comparison might be ‘futuristic injection-room’. That kindof turned my stomach. Nevertheless, I had a quick look round. The games seemed to be pay-per-play using tokens of some sort, so I went to the bar to get some. But after waiting more than ten minutes while the other two customers perused the cocktails menu, and ordered some bizarrely complicated concoctions, I gave up and sped off to the station.
A few months later, I’d been thinking that I should probably give the place another chance. First impressions can sometimes be misleading, and with so little to choose from on the local arcade menu, we probably shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss things out of hand. So when an event I’d been attending finished earlier than expected, I trailed back down to Lothian Road, with the gritty determination to be as open-minded as possible. Here are my thoughts.
NQ64 is in the middle of what might be described as Edinburgh’s entertainment sector. It’s here that you find most of the theatres and clubs, and a fair few pubs and restaurants. Its exact location taps very deeply into that heritage, being cheek-by-jowl with the Caley Picture House, site of the once infamous Century 2000 night club on Lothian Road.
With its neon-lit frontage framing an actual arcade cabinet, the venue itself is hard to miss.
While the entrance is small, it opens up, TARDIS-like, into a cavernous interior. Now, I’m not gonna lie. My first impressions of the decor haven’t changed. The place is cold, hard and uncompromising in its dystopian, brutalist vibe. There’s concrete, neon and black-lit graffiti everywhere. I just don’t get that. It’s neither inviting nor comfortable. It’s not really conducive to playing arcade games. But that doesn’t mean you’ll be having a drink and chat with friends. There’s plenty to drink, with a heavy emphasis on cocktails, but you won’t be doing any chatting. The music – grinding modern rap or some such – was cranked up to deafening levels. I literally couldn’t hear the sounds from any of the games, and could only confirm the sound was actually switched on in the couple of seconds between the tracks. That’s probably why the Guitar Hero cab was in a separate room with a close-able door. But we’ll come back to the cabs in a moment.
NQ64: Guitar Hero Booth – Best seats in the house.
Having come to enjoy the cabs, I went to the bar to grab a diet coke and some tokens. As previously, I seemed to arrive at the worst possible moment – ending up behind another protracted cocktail queue. Don’t get me wrong, the bar staff (singular) was perfectly amiable. But there was only one of him, making drinks that took ten minutes to order and make. That can’t be a great for takings.
Tokens were 15 for £8, or 30 for £12. I went for 15. Which is just as well.
There were around 30 cabs all told, mostly woodies (albeit no Electrocoins), but a also a row of candies, a couple of recent pintables, a dance game, and a separate room housing Guitar Hero. Oh yes, and there was also a row of modern games consoles and monitors for those who prefer to game sitting down. Most of the games on offer were racers, shooters and fighters.
There was a Daytona USA upright, a Time Crisis 2 – IMHO the best of the crises series, and a dedicated Pac Man cabinet – all with CRT screens.
They also had a Q-Bert and a Puzzle Bobble. I was a bit disappointed that there were no shmups or classic platform games, which I tend to gravitate towards. But I think it’s fair to suggest that most classic gamers would find something they like in the selection. Whether they would actually enjoy playing it, however, is a different story.
Apart from the atmosphere, and the lack of audible game sounds – which really kills the arcade experience, most of the older games are fitted with LCD displays. And come on. Double Dragon on an LCD? No thanks. Some of the classic games did have CRT screens, but most were either very dim, or had bad screen burn. And I’m sorry, but that just doesn’t do it for me.
I did my best to ‘invest’ in a few goes of Daytona and Pac Man, but on the other video games I played, the controls were all damaged in one way or another, the joystick on Tetris was bridging connections, and didn’t always go the way you pushed it. The cross hairs on Terminator 2 didn’t track the movement of the gun across the screen, and the start buttons, and coin slots on the others didn’t always register. Sigh.
I enjoy the occasional game of Guitar Hero, but so – it seems – does everyone else. Although with hindsight, I suspect it may have been partly because of the door to that wee room, and the ability to shut out the dreadful racket.
Conclusions?
I liked Konbo Arcade Cafe, and was sad to see it go.
NQ64 on the other hand is something of an enigma. And that surprises me. Because it seems to be part of a UK-wide chain, which must have a fair amount of funding and business accumen behind it.
NQ64’s stylishly decorated tables. Watch that tippex doesn’t rub off on your elbows.
You see, to be honest, it’s not really that clear what it is trying to be? Most of the floor space is given over to arcade cabinets. But as I’ve already mentioned, it’s impossible to enjoy them properly even if you are a fan of the titles on offer. And while decor is – obviously – a matter of taste, if your motivations for visiting an 80s or 90s-themed arcade are even slightly driven by nostaligia, you’re not going to be bowled over by the torture-bunker stylings. What’s needed here are carpets, not concrete.
Of course, it could be that the cabs are only really there as ornaments – to provide an ironic backdrop to the usual bar-room shenanigans. And why not? But with so few seats, and such offensively loud, and, well, just offensive ‘music’, you’re not going to be enjoying a laugh or a chat with your pals. Is the agenda here to encourage the punters to focus on their drinking, rather than their talking? That would be the preserve of the night club. But with so few seats and no dance area, what’s the point of that? Something has to give, surely – something has to change – if this place is going to have any kind of future. Unless and until it does, I can’t see myself going back.
NQ64’s fancy tokens. I bought 15, and ended up taking 7 of them home with me.
But what do you think? Am I missing something here? Please do share your thoughts in the comments below. And if you do know about any other decent arcade venues in or around Edinburgh, for goodness’ sake, give them a shout out!
Thanks for reading everyone. See you next time when I revisit my whistlestop tour of Valletta.
In the mean time, why not explore some other capital ideas:
This ossum fan design got more than 10,000 likes on the Lego Ideas forum. Sadly, Lego chose not to go with it.
Denmark: Land of bacon, butter and interlocking building blocks (I’m talking about LEGO people!). Let’s face it, even if that’s all they had, Denmark would still be brilliant. The Danes think so too. That’s partly because they know how to look after themselves. But also because they know how to look after each other. Compared to other countries, they’re big on the ideas of collective responsibility and trust – even when it comes to politicians, which is probably why Denmark consistently ranks near the very top of the happiest nations in the world.
JJ’s Arcade, Pintrest (not my image!).
In terms of its lanscapes, Denmark is relatively flat. Its gently rolling hills and famland average a mere 30 m above sea level. Don’t worry, though, it does have its points of high excitment!
Copenhagen
Nyhavn, Copenhagen. A nice spot for some Carlsberg and contemplation.
One of the high(light)s is the capital city, Copenhagen. The Danes know it as København, but you might be more familiar with its Yorkshire pronunciation: ‘Cope-en-hey-gu-un’. As in, ‘Hey! Hey! Cope-en-hey-gu-un! Bright lights, such a wonderful sight‘. Sigh. Gotta love that Black Lace.
Copenhagen is a big city, with all the facilities and amenities you would expect. As a tourist, you’ll find loads to do. I’d recommed a visit to the National Museum of Denmark. It’s huge, and packed full of amazing (and surprising) artefacts – way too many to peruse comfortably in one day. But if you have kids in tow, you can get ’em to dress up like this, and keep the photos safe to embarras them when they’re older.
Before lockdown, I was lucky enough to visit Denmark several times in relatively quick succession, with work, and on holiday with the family. Jutland is worth a visit if you get the chance, especially the old towns like Ribe on the west coast. They’re very attractive indeed, like real life lego villages. So is the original Legoland amusement park, and the more recent Lego House – aka ‘The ultimate LEGO experience‘! Top tip if you plan to visit either of those, check with the local McDonalds if they’re offering discount vouchers with their Happy Meals – it makes a big difference (you can often find them in northern Germany too if you’re taking a road trip).
Ribe. A real-life lego town.
Back in August 2017, I found myself ‘between gigs’ in Copenhagen with some time on my hands. Being a hopeless arcade addict, my feet started pulling me west of the ‘Indre by’ part of the city centre, to its Blågård quarter.
The Bip Bip Bar: Wesselgade 4, Copenhagen 2200 (2017)
Dronning Louise Bridge by night.
While it’s only a kilometre or two off the beaten tourist track, this is no scary suburb. There are still bistros and bars aplenty along the main road and side streets alike. It’s just that they’re more heavily frequented by Danes than visitors – the real deal, so to speak. Crossing Dronning Louise’s Bridge, turning left onto Peblinge Dossering, and then shoogling up and left onto Wesselgade, you’ll find yourself stood face-to-face with the unassuming brick-built facade of a regular Danish tenement block. There, happily ensconsed in the basement of Wesselgade 4, was the Bip Bip Bar.
The first room was where you’d check in, buy your drinks and get settled, or occasionally return for a chillax in front of the big screen showing tastefully-curated retro-snippets on heavy rotation. When I was there, they also had an old pong console hooked up to a portable black and white TV – retro-chic (or is that kitsch) at its best! The staff were welcoming and helpful – as were the regulars. Over the course of the evening I enjoyed quite a few chats and games of doubles with the Danish enthusiasts!
That all happened through to the right, in a much larger space of knocked-through basement rooms, where the arcade action was at.
There were 7 or 8 classic pins, and maybe 4 or 5 candy cabs, stacked with more than just the usual range of shooters. For me, though, the highlight of the evening was the selection of woodies, of which there must have been about two dozen – or more – all told.
Back in the heyday of the arcade scene, the misspent youth of Denmark (?!) enjoyed a not dissimilar mixture of arcade cabinetry to that of their spotty cousins across the North Sea. While they did get their hands on the occasional dedicated cabinet – as you’ll find in the Bip Bip Bar, with its Atari Centipede and Star Wars cabs, Sega Outrun upright and others, the bulk were generic woodies. While we Ukanians might have expected a row of gleaming Electorcoin Goliaths, the Danes had their own manufacturers. And there were several neat little rows of their angular woodies here, fully-loaded with an impressive range of Golden Age standards.
When I was there, I played: Rainbow Islands, Bubble Bobble, Ghosts’n’Goblins, Kung Fu Master, Wonder Boy, Moon Patrol, Robotron 2084, Galaga, Centipede, Star Wars, Outrun, Snow Bros, and 1943. Phew! I was there for ages!!! I also saw Donkey Kong, Blaster, Gyruss, Go for Broke, Lethal Enforcers, as well as a bunch of Fighters I didn’t touch (we’ve covered that already). But there were so many, I can’t remember them all.
In terms of condition, almost all the machines were top notch. Maybe a stuck button or two on one of them, but that was all. By the end of the night, there had inevitably been a few casualties. GnG was flaking out, and a screen on one of the others was failing. But come on – that’s only to be expected with aging arcade technology. In fact, like the squished animals you sometimes see at the side of the road, it’s actually a sign of a healthy ecosystem (maybe)! Squeezing my synapses even more tightly together, I seem to recall there was only the one LCD screen – in 1943 – albeit with the original bezel still in place, so it didn’t look quite as awful as it might have done. And as far as I’m concerned that’s not just a good thing, it’s essential for the proper arcade experience.
The new Bip Bip Bar at Fælledvej 7, Copenhagen (Google Maps).
Now, the more observant among you may be wondering at the laboured use of the past tense in my ramblings so far. Yeah, well, it’s deliberate. But not beacause of any stylistic pretensions. The thing is, when I was checking the address for this place, to find a better picture of the outside, I discovered that it’s moved!
A few years after my visit, it seems that Bip Bip relocated to a larger and airer venue just up the road at Fælledvej 7. They’ve kept most of the old games, but expanded and improved their collection, especially on the pinball front, and the selection of old computer systems on display and available for play. They’re no longer stuck with the same old Pong (Tee hee hee!). You can now get down and dirty with a C64 while your pint of Tuborg watches!
When I went to the old venue, I’m pretty sure it was pay-per-play. Now you have a choice. You can still choose to pay-per-play, for the reasonable price of DKK 5 a game (about 60p). Or you can opt to pay by the hour for freeplay. Details of their current gameslist, bar menu, and session charges can be found on their fancy new website, here.
The Verdict?
I really enjoyed my visit to the old Bip Bip Bar on Wesselgade. It was clean, friendly, and packed with well-maintained video games from the Golden Age of arcade gaming – and beyond. From what I can see, the new venue takes things to the next level. Literally. The games are now upstairs instead of in the basement! Would I go back to the reboot if I’m ever back in Copenhagen? Having seen the selection of games on offer, and the very resonable prices they’re charing, abso-flippin-tively.
Arcade Odysseus 